The unknown sanctuary [microform] ; a pilgrimage from Rome to Israel

(Tbc Minivers it^ of Chicago
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THE UNKNOWN SANCTUARY

H

PH
H

THE UNKNOWN SANCTUARY

A PILGRIMAGE
FROM ROME TO ISRAEL

By
AIME PALLIERJ3

Translated from the French by

LOUISE WATERMAN WISE

NEW YORK

BLOCH PUBLISHING COMPANY
1930

THE UNKNOWN SANCTUARY

A PILGRIMAGE
FROM ROME TO ISRAEL

By

AIME PALLIERB

ii

Translated from the French by
LOUISE WATERMAN WISE

NEW YORK

BLOCH PUBLISHING COMPANY
1930

Copyright, 1928, by
BLOCK PUBLISHING COMPANY, INC.

All English rights reserved.

Third Printing

PRINTED m THE UNITEB STATES or

CONTENTS

CHAPTER PAGE

FOREWORD. By E. Fleg vii

INTRODUCTION xi

1. GUSTAVE DORE'S BIBLE 1

2. BROTHER ALIX 10

3. NEILA 1!?

4. A SECOND-HAND BOOK 28

5. THE ABBES LEMANN 37

6. THE TEFILLIN 51

7. THE GALL OF SALVATION 66

8. THE WORD OF THE GOSPEL 78

9. AT LA GRANDE CHARTREUSE 88

10. CHRIST WITHOUT A CHURCH 96

11. THE DOMINICAN CHAPEL 103

12. THE JEWISH FAMILY 117

13. ELIJAH BENAMOZEGH 129

14. THE CATHOLICISM OF ISRAEL 141

15. JEWS AND CHRISTIANS 156

16. MEETING WITH THE MASTER.; 165

17. THE CHRISTIAN CRISIS 181

18 PERE HYACINTHE 188

19. THE MODERNISTS 200

20. OCTOBER, 1908 2i4

21. ISRAEL AND HUMANITY 221

22. CONCLUSION 231

FOREWORD.
By E. FLEG

BORN on tEe slope of the pious hill o? Fourviere,
cradled by his mother in the charm of the Catholic
faith, disciplined by the teachings of the religious
school, destined by vocation for the seminary and
the Church, Aime Palliere is today one of the
leading spokesmen of Judaism. He is listened to
by orthodox, by liberals, by Zionists and assimila-
tionists, all of whom seek his cooperation. Jewish
journals of all shades welcome his writings.

And not only does he achieve this miracle of con-
ciliating wholly opposite types of Israel, but he
achieves the further miracle of being able to adopt
a new religion without breaking with the old. Never
was a heretic less banned. M. Palliere maintains
so appreciative an attitude in regard to Rome that
the faithful of the Church have not withdrawn their
friendship from him. Churchmen introduced by
him into Jewish circles have consented to speak
under his leadership, and a Catholic publication
has printed a sermon preached by him in the syna-
gogue.

711

vm FOREWORD

Having discovered in Israel the bearer of an ideal
which is of importance to all humanity, M. Palliere,
disciple of the illustrious Italian rabbi, Elijah Ben-
amozegh, has conceived Judaism as a true Catholi-
cism, which, without excluding the latter, transcends
it, insofar as it includes within it, in vital synthesis,
all the religious families of earth.

But as we shall see in reading his clear and serene
confession, M. Palliere, in order to find the truth,
was not compelled to experience the intellectual
crisis, which tore the Catholic Renan from the arms
of Christ, nor the sudden illumination which brought
the Jew of Ratisbonne to the feet of the Virgin.
His conversion was the gradual result of his per-
sonal experiences. The special Providence, which
guided the seeming accidents of his life, touched
his soul with the most varied emotions, and gave
to them a new religious expression. Reversing the
route by which Catholicism had developed from
primitive Christianity, and primitive Christianity
from Judaism, he became step by step the spiritual
contemporary of those great Romans, who, at the
time of the coming of Christ, were the proselytes
of Israel. Almost unconsciously he realized that
he had ceased to be a Christian and that he had
been conquered by Judaism.

In this inevitable return journey the new convert

FOREWORD ix

seems as yet a solitary pilgrim but this may only
seem to be so.

In fact, the dream of our prophets was never to
impose on all peoples of earth those rites which were
only obligatory upon the descendants of Abraham
who founded a race of priests; and our sages for-
bade us to disturb the idolater at prayer, for they
said, "Though he knows it not, his prayer addresses
itself to the true God." What sages and prophets
desired was, that without reducing the diversity of
religious tongues, numerous as the human races, to
uniformity, the spirit of justice and peace and love,
revealed by God to our patriarchs, and preserved by
their descendants, might come to live in the souls of
all men.

And at last there seems to be a sign that this
age-old hope may be realized amid the diverse faiths
of the world. Might one not say that the ancient
Messianism of Israel, which is become the religion
of Palliere, is on the way to becoming the re-
ligion of humanity?

INTRODUCTION

On one of the hills of Rome, a Christian priest and
a Jew met at the hour of sunset. At their feet the
Forum, where so many vestiges of the past com-
mingle in impressive disorder, became gradually
enshadowed, and soon the monoliths, the columns,
the tombstones, statues and bas-reliefs, became to
their eyes indefinite things lost in the mists of night.
Opposite to them, the last rays of the setting sun
still gilded the dome of St. Peter's, surmounted by
the cross. And the priest, giving full rein to his
emotions, said, "What has become of this Roman
paganism which believed itself triumphant, filling
the world with its haughty emblems? The Forum
where darkness now reigns gives us the answer:
ruins naught but ruins! And Hellenism with its
poetic and sensual myths, captive to beauty and
forgetful of morals -and the powerful cults of
which we find the cryptic symbols in the trenches
of Nineveh, in the ruins of Balbeck, in the debris of
Carthage, the religions of Isis and of Osiris or of
the goddess Tanit? Ruins yet again! And your
Judaism, all the imperishable essence of which has
passed into the great religion for which it was pre-

XI

xii INTRODUCTION

paration fore-runner what is it now without
temple, without priests, without altar? A ruin, only
a ruin! Look there on the other hand, and see the
cross that gleams, symbol of that Christian civiliza-
tion summoned to redeem the world. He must be
blind indeed who does not perceive it! Here the
shadows that creep abroad there the light; here
death and silence there life and its sources of
vitality ever renewed; on the one side that which is
past and forgotten, on the other side the future and
its hope!"

Thus spake the priest. And those who think that
such words proceed only from the lips or from
the pens of conforming Christians, are vastly mis-
taken. Under one guise or another, they are re-
peated everywhere as indisputable truths. In vain
we choose to ignore them. They appear in magazine
articles, in the pages of popular novels, in some
part of a discourse, on the lecture platform, or in
the Academy. Whether you are interested in art,
science, poetry, literature, politics, sociology, you
will be sure to come upon them. And even those
liberal thinkers who believe that science and the
spirit of progress have now outstripped Christianity,
are ready to agree that if Christianity has had its
day, Judaism, which preceded it, is even more ob-
viously outworn; that its conception of life and of

INTRODUCTION xni

the world is now without value and it were absurd to
seek to revive it in our day.

Renan, whose Christian bias more than once
dimmed his critical sense, gave the formula for this
religious philosophy of history when he wrote:
"Having produced Christianity, Judaism still ling-
ers on as the barren trunk of the tree, together with
the one living branch."

If this wide-spread opinion were justified, the
attitude of the Jew, who still remains faithful to
his own traditions, could only be explained as the
last homage paid to the glories of the past, but the
attitude of a Christian by birth, who deliberately
embraces Judaism, would seem unthinkable and
shocking. It would seem to be the abandonment of
the life and joy of a populated and prosperous city,
in order to take one's place light-heartedly amidst
tombs.

I would that the following pages might serve as
a witness against Renan's theory. I have often
been besought to set down these reminiscences and
have always felt reluctant to do so. I know well
that converts from every church and from every
party have the habit of telling the public the origin
and various stages of their evolution. Thus they
most often obey the need of explaining their con-
duct to their enemies, and of pointing out to their

xiv INTRODUCTION

old co-religionists the errors which they desired to
abandon, and the new light which they believe they
have received.

I felt little inclination to follow the example of
those writers of biographies whose chief aim is to
justify themselves in the eyes of others. I have
always God be praised enjoyed those inward
blessings, which are ample compensation for the
slight inconvenience of not being generally under-
stood. He who has peace of mind and conscience
is also there is no doubt about it at peace with
Heaven, despite the clamor with which earth may
seek to trouble him.

One day a devout believer, the passion of whose
life was the study of religion, said to me with a
peculiar smile, "Is the only true Christian really
he who has become a Jew?" Surely the irony dis-
closed by these words was not alone for me, for
my religious experience seemed to him sufficiently
rational and in conformity with the will of God, to
require no justification.

I am very far from contesting the effect that
public confessions may have on the outside world.
I merely believe that every conversion is an essen-
tially personal act, the psychology of which may
be of more or less interest, but which, being deter-

INTRODUCTION xv

j

mined by a conjunction of personal circumstances,
does not necessarily serve for general guidance.

In my case, however, more was involved than
an individual conversion. It is truly an unknown
sanctuary into which I entered, and I dc believe it
may be of great service both for Jews and non-Jews
to lift the heavy veil which hides it from all eyes
for the edifice which I beheld is incomparably more
beautiful than any built by the hands of men. Lofty
enough to house the highest aspirations, vast enough
to hold all the worshippers of the true God, and to
help them to become brothers!

If then these intimate revelations, written with
sincerity and scrupulous care, can serve the cause
which is dear to me, and be of help to any souls in
their study of the problems of religion, I shall not
regret having overcome the hesitation which I felt
at the thought of this task, and I shall feel justified
in having undertaken it.

GUSTAVE DORfi'S BIBLE

THERE are cities that have souls and others that
have none. Lyons is a city with a soul and its
character is clearly marked. But the soul of this
populous town, the quiet of which offers so great a
contrast to its commercial activity, is rare and
subtle. She unveils herself to the hurried passer-by,
but she demands long acquaintance before revealing
her inmost charm.

An atmosphere of mysticism has always obtained
in the old Gallo-Roman city, centre of ceaseless
toil. The mists which so often veil its skies, en-
courage the unfolding of small independent sects,
which have existed in Lyons, but have never been
able to extend beyond. The little "Anticoncordat"
Church still survives in a state of touching anachron-
ism. Vintras left some followers there and Gnos-
ticism still holds its disciples. Nevertheless,
Catholicism which has ceaselessly opposed the re-
current tides of harmless heresy is above all bene-
fited by the religious bent of the soul of Lyons.

To appreciate this peculiar aspect of Lyons, one

1

2 THE UNKNOWN SANCTUARY

must cross the hill of Fourviere, dotted by convents
and chapels, and dominated by the great Basilica
with its four massive towers as by a fortress. Per-
fect peace reigns in this relieious quarter, and all
things breathe of ineffable sadness. The high' win-
dowless walls between which one walks have a sad,
but not hostile look. Behind these bare fagades,
the birds sing on beautiful days, amid the fresK
woods and in the shadow of exquisite chapels, per-
fumed by incense and by flowers; and sweet voices
murmur in never ending prayers. This peaceful
haunt, far from the noises of the great city, does
not merely shelter the contemplative life. The
worst of human sufferings find refuge there and
such is the charity of Lyons, wise as well as brave,
that the greatest ladies come there to care with
their own delicate hands for those most repulsively
plague-stricken. Above all this, stands amidst the
constant pealing of bells, the image of the Ma-
donna, queen of the pious city, inspirer of her hidden
'devotions. It was in this city and exactly uoon this
holy hill that I was born. I grew up in this pious
atmosphere, still saturated with the memories of
the martyrs, Pothinus, Blandine, Ireneus. who had
watered this soil with their blood. I took my first
walks in the garden of the Minimes, redolent of the
scent of acacias which strewed the turf with their

GUSTAVE BORE'S BIBLE 3

white petals, and on this route of Sainte Foy where
one enjoys so marvellous a view of Lyons and the
juncture of the Rh6ne and the Saone.

Nevertheless, in the first chapters of my child-
hood memory I really do not find the great deeds
of Christian history stand out as clearly as do Bible
scenes. In fact what could a little lad of sensitive
temperament, who hated noisy games, do during
the long winter days when the fogs of the Rhone
prevented his going to school what could he do
but look at beautiful pictures? I do not think there
ever was a child more passionately devoted to that
occupation than was I. I have often been told that
no one knew how I learned to read, but I know it
was through contemplating the beautifully illumin-
ated Persian pictures that illustrated the Arabian
Nights, my favorite book. But the greatest joy
was to be able to gaze entranced at the matchless
engravings of the Bible of Gustave Dore".

These two enormous volumes in red binding, too
large for a library shelf, are Hidden away in some
large family closet. Your mother is their guardian
and goes to find one of them to lay it before your
ravished eyes if you have been very good. Once
open, this book requires a table all to itself, and you
are perched on your chair where old books of no
importance are piled up and soft cushions to place

4 THE UNKNOWN SANCTUARY

you on an equal height with the great book. And
the dear mother's hands, slowly, reverently turn the
pages to show you the splendid pictures of a world
of epic grandeur and lovely poetry. Behold the
gorgeous titles, the earthly paradise and its serpent,
the murder of Abel, the deluge and the phantas-
magoria of Noah's Ark. Here is the father of all
the faithful, knife in hand, ready to sacrifice his
beloved son, the wanderings of Jacob in symbolic
visions, the touching incidents in the story of Jo-
seph.

And finally the Hebrews, the enslaved peo-
ple, building for the glory of the Pharaohs the
cities of Pithom and Rameses, there the people
liberated through the call of Moses crossing the Red
Sea, wherein the Egyptians are to be engulfed.
On one page the wild dance around the golden calf,
at the foot of Sinai; on another the great law-giver
dying alone on Nebo, in sight of the Promised Land
wherein he was not to enter. Then, Joshua, and
the trumpets of Jericho, and the battle of Gibeon
which saw the sun stand still; David, conqueror of
the Philistines, by turns now culpable and now re-
pentant, transported with joy before the Ark, over-
whelmed with grief by the news of the death of
Absalom, his son, killed in the forest of Ephraim.
There is the glorious and enigmatic Solomon on his

GUSTAVE DORE'S BIBLE 5

throne; Hiram of Tyre, tracing with great compasses
the plans of the temple of Jerusalem; the mag-
nificent cortege of the Queen of Sheba coming to
visit the very wise and unimpressionable monarch.

Then there is Elijah finding refuge in his cave
after having destroyed the priests of Baal; Hezekiah,
humbly imploring the deliverance of his people from
the hands of the Assyrian; Jeremiah prophesying
national catastrophies, in the precincts of the Tem-
ple. And here is Zedekiah, last king of Judah, taken
prisoner in Babylon. These men, sadly seated be-
side the green river-banks, these are the Hebrew
captives. But let us turn the page, it is they again
who return with the permission of Cyrus and re-
build the Temple, while lamenting the lost splendors
of the ancient Sanctuary. Here the beautiful parable
of Jonah and Nineveh converted. There, that of
Job on his dunghill receiving the consolation of his
friends. Ah, the persecution of Antiochus Epiph-
anesl

The revolt of the Maccabees, the martyrdom of
the seven brothers, encouraged by their heroic
mother, the youngest and last proudly facing the
tyrant: "I will not obey the command of the
king, but the precept of the law which was given us
by Moses. I gladly surrender, as did my brothers,
my body and my soul in defense of the laws of my

6 THE UNKNOWN SANCTUARY

fatHers, imploring God speedily to show mercy to
our nation." The Maccabees! what regret I felt
later on turning the leaves of my Hebrew Bible not
to find this beautiful book therein! Was all this
religion? No. What was there in common between
the carnal circumcision of the Hebrews and our
very holy baptism which instantly transforms a lit-
tle child into an angel of purity worthy of all
heavenly blessings? What relation between our
Eucharistic communion and the Passover of the
armies of Moses, eating the lamb roasted at the fire,
the girded loins, staff in hand in the haste of de-
parture? In truth no relation whatever. No sacra-
ments to sanctify the halting places of life! but
discipline; rigid laws to bend to providential ends
a stiff-necked people. No sacraments, therefore no
religion, but an epic poem, the prodigious epic of a
chosen people, set apart, to conserve at whatever the
cost, in the midst of idolatrous peoples, the faith in
the true God in preparation for the coming of the
Messiah, who must be born of this race. The Mes-
siah!

Pivotal point of its history, the one name
which was given to men thru which they might be
saved. He it is who comes to found religion here
on earth. Before him all were but unreal shadows.
But it was distinctly written that the people which

GUSTAVE DOSE'S BIBLE 7

would give him to the world would not believe in
him, and, its mission ended, would be blotted out
from history. For behold Daniel, the youths in the
furnace, the dream of Nebuchadnezzar, the tragic
feast of Belshazzar, and in the ninth chapter, in the
midst of the prophets' visions, the announcement of
the condemnation of Israel: "After sixty-two weeks,
the Messiah shall be put to death and the people
who reject him will no longer be his people,"
all this being written, clear as day in the two
small Hebrew words veen /o* of this prophetic chap-
ter.

Poor Israel! What a sad destiny is hers, but her
epic poem is none the less beautiful and glorious.
Gustave Dore might illustrate an edition of the
Odyssey or the ^neid and that would furnish mate-
rial for other splendid pictures. The only difference
would be that these engravings would magnify fairy
tales while those of the great Bible place in relief
the true history of a people whose unique call wa
to bring salvation. This is what I learned while
the visible angel that God gives to little children

gently turned the pages of the big book for me,

* * *

In the district school which I frequented most
irregularly, it must be said, there were three little
Cohens. They were most singular boys. At first

*But not for himself,

8 THE UNKNOWN SANCTUARY

they remained seated, absent-minded and indiffer-
ent, whilst we perched on our knees, on our benches
to recite the prayer: Hail, Mary, full of grace!
And I threw severe glances toward them, finding
in their irreverence toward the mother of God for
whom I felt a very special devotion, the utmost im-
propriety. They had other strange ways. Thus on
the eve of the Sabbath they seemed only to come to
school to escape their parents, for they did nothing
at all, and kept their hands in their pockets during
dictation. Then on this day they suddenly became
incapable of tearing the smallest bit of paper. We
could tear it up under their noses. "Do you want
some? There!" nothing availed; they could not im-
itate us, poor things. How far off is the time when
the clear light of day will explain such incredible
things! Without doubt the story of these queer ac-
tions was passed from mouth to mouth; these strange
schoolfellows were little Jews, but never, never in
the world did the idea strike me that there could
be the slightest connection between them and my
remote Hebrews of magnificent stature. But, it
was soon necessary to leave this school to enter the
great institution where no Cohen of any sort would
ever enter. And later it was also necessary to sell,
as too great an encumbrance, too difficult to carry
about, the.beautiful Dorf Bible. I saw it go with

GUSTAVE DORE'S BIBLE 9

regret, for its engravings had not lost their charm
for me, and had not ceased to teach me many things
of this old Israel, which had loved, battled, suffered,
and is dead, so that little Christians may assist at
mass, and piously pray to the holy Virgin.

II

BROTHER ALIX

Two religious impressions dominate all the memories
of my childhood, both so profound that I cannot
recall them without emotion.

In the beginning it was but a dream, simply a
dream, which had for me all the value of a revela-
tion. I do not know what could have been the
religious dreams of the children of the exiled He-
brews on the bank of the Chebar in Babylon, at
the time when Ezekiel had the great visions set
down in his book, but of what would a little Catholic
boy of Lyons be likely to dream, if not of the sweet
image he so often beheld in the Chapel of Fourviere,
and in truth it was the Virgin Mary whom I beheld
In my dreams, she assuring me in such a manner of
her maternal benediction, and of the well-being of
which this favor was the pledge, that I awoke in
the morning in an indescribable ecstasy.

My mother noticed that something unusual was
happening within me, but questioned me for a long
time in vain. I did not wish to speak of it, fearing
to lose the impression of the celestial vision by

10

BROTHER ALIX 11

words too gross, too inadequate to express what I
felt. When at last I decided to tell my mother of
my visions, she tenderly kissed me, and knew how
to find good and pious words to draw lessons of
wisdom from the dream that had made so vivid an
impression upon me. I might have been eight or
nine years old at that time and the intense piety
that I showed from that moment was considered
as the first indication of a religious call.

I began to say that some day I would be a priest
an'd prepared myself with great care for my first
communion. This was tfie other great religious
impression of my youth and it was because of this
that I was entered into a church college. The in-
tention was praiseworthy, and can alone justify in
my eyes the imprisonment to which I was con-
demned, and which to a nature such as mine was
veritable torture. It is doubtful whether children
who remain in their homes can receive an education
comparable to that which I had the good fortune
to Have had in that institution. There the clays of
retreat which precede the ceremony are unforget-
able.

The new communicants are set apart and freed
from all work unconnected with religious exercises.
Three times daily the services unite tHose in retreat
in the chapel; chants, prayers, addresses succeed

12 THE UNKNOWN SANCTUARY

one another with absolute certainty of the desired
results. Everything is so arranged as to inculcate
in the child the conviction that his whole life de-
pends upon the act he is about to perform, nay,
even his eternal salvation. He may have made mis-
takes in the course of his life, but if he has had a
good first communion he will always rediscover the
right path, and his ultimate salvation will be assured.
But who is certain to bring to the accomplishment
of this great act the right attitude? Who can
answer for the adequacy of his preparation? The
consciousness of the gravity of the hour, of the
fearful responsibility weighs heavily on the con-
science. It is a matter of meeting with God. Woe
to the frivolous or the hypocrite who permits this
hour of grace to pass by! The lightest-hearted
grow serious and frightened.

Nevertheless all terrors were banished for us in
the days of solemn preparation, thanks to the in-
comparable master to whose care we were entrusted.
He was a simple brother, the value of whose in-
struction was next to nothing. Ordinarily he busied
himself with the linens and was never able even
to teach the younger classes. But he was a saint
and no one understood as did he how to deal with
the souls of children. Brother Alix, I may call
him by his name, for long since he has entered into

BROTHER ALIX 13

the glory of his Lord, had the matchless charm
which radiates from a pure soul wholly consecrated
to God. His clear childlike eyes had a changeless
serenity and the constant smile on his lips, lighting
up his frank and good face, revealed the depth of
joy found in that conception of happiness which is
not of this world.

I only vaguely recall the father who preached the
sermons during retreat; while I always see the smile
of Brother Alix, with whom we spent our hours of
recreation and every moment that religious ex-
ercises left us free. If today I were to read the
exhortations lavished upon us by the good brother,
probably I should discover profound truths, pos-
sibly also some platitudes; but that which cannot
be rendered again is the accent of conviction which
touched all his words, and the religious ardor which
emanated from his entire being. When on the morn-
ing of the first communion, we went to receive the
blessing of our masters, the goodly inclinations of
which our souls were full were in large part the
work of this good brother. How noble a role is that
of the teachers charged with the preparation of
children for the most important act of their religion I
And how easy, too, if they understand and know
how to utilize the possibilities of the moment! The
ceremonies of the first communion I have held in

14 THE UNKNOWN SANCTUARY

unfading remembrance, due to the devoted prepara-
tion I had received. But I also recall the unutter-
able melancholy which overcame me the evening
after vespers, when my parents, who had come for
the services, were obliged to leave. Was it possible!
It was already passed, the great day so eagerly
awaited! It is thus that the child learns the
brevity of life's joys, but the joys of such a day
are at least among that number which do not wholly
pass, and to what is truly abiding and divine in
them I have never been unfaithful.

Ill

NEILA

It is difficult for me to envisage the state of mind
of a young Israelite of our country, brought up with
the basic notion that Judaism after all is not a re-
ligion like others, and that, even though it counts
but a limited number of adherents, it is none
the less the most perfect, the only true re-
ligion. Practices that seem to him the very law
of God are more and more abandoned, in
any case incompletely observed and with so much
difficulty even by the most faithful, that tfiey often
find it needful to abandon tfiem entirely, Tfie wfiold
edifice of worship which he sees crumbling, falling
stone by stone, claims to be the temple of truth
on earth; and at the same time this youth assimi-
lates all the Western culture upon which Christian-
ity has so strongly impressed itself. He studies our
classics, he reads Bossuet, he visits our cathedrals
where the believing heart of the middle ages still
beats.

Each day he finds himself face to face with
the great fact Christianity which gives him no

15

16 THE UNKNOWN SANCTUARY

reasonable explanation, which overrules and crushes
his little family tradition, with all the fulness, with
all the magnificence, with all the authority conferred
upon it by the veneration of many peoples. How
then under such conditions can his faith remain
unshakable? And, for the most part one sees
him forsake his own beliefs, without adopting those
of the others. For the young Christian, on the
contrary, loyalty is put to a less severe test, above
all, when one is brought up, as was I, in an environ-
ment where skill was used, carefully to keep out of
one's way everything that might serve as pretext
for objections. The divorce which obtains between
the Church and modern society may not be entirely
concealed from him, but he is helped to find within
the teachings of his own catechism on the origin
of evil, sufficient reason to explain their apparent
inconsistencies.

Thus until my seventeenth year I never felt the
slightest doubt about the divinity of the church as
the only logical form of Christianity, considered to
be the very expression of truth given here below.
The desire which awoke within me at an early age
to give to the holiness of Catholic doctrine the signa-
ture of my entire life, grew stronger within me,
without the need of any one to urge me in that
direction. The only allusion that a man of faintly

NEIL A 17

mystic faith once permitted himself to make before
me, vaunting the material advantages of a church
career, would rather have turned me from it had I
been less strongly attracted by the priesthood. But
it was tactily understood by my people that I was
called to enter the seminary later on.

Renan has said that the true token of a calling
is the utter incapacity to do anything else well. This
observation is right, and I may say that I was in-
dubitably destined for a religious ministry, since
anything I could do outside of that career was only
for me a thing aside, temporary, or of secondary im-
portance, to which I bent myself with difficulty.
And if today I write these pages, it is without doubt
with the secret purpose to preach to my friends,
known and unknown, a sermon in my own way. I
can only hope it may be less tiresome to them than
many other sermons.

When I was seventeen years of age a strange in-
cident occurred which came to exercise an influence
over my whole life. I call the attention of my
readers to what I am about to relate to them.
On a certain Thursday in the autumn when I was
still on my vacation at Lyons, I was walking with
a comrade on the Quai Tilsitt where the synagogue
stands. We noticed that a number of shops had
remained closed that day. My companion had

18 THE UNKNOWN SANCTUARY

heard that it was the great festival of the Jews and
suggested to me that we enter the temple. I con-
sented not without hesitation. Alone I would never
have done it, for the pious Catholic does not permit
himself to enter any building belonging to another
religion, and for imperative reasons he must abstain
from taking part in any ceremony. The synagogue
was quite filled. All the votaries were standing
and silent. I understood later that I had arrived
at the moment of the prayer of Neila* on Yom Kip-
pur.**

I will seek to analyse the impression that I
felt in contemplating that which met my gaze. It
was such that from that unique moment my life
was to be shaped. This may seem inexplicable, and
for me it is an unfathomable enigma, but all my
plans for the future were to be upset and finally
ended. I was to find myself unconsciously led in
a direction which would have roused my indignant
protestations, if at that moment it had been revealed
to me. There was not within me reflection or reason-
ing of any kind, and for a long time nothing was
to manifest the change which was to come into my
life, and nevertheless everything dates from then.

*Neila the prayer at the close of the Atonement Day
known as "the closing of the gate."

**Yom Kippur Day of Atonement.

NEILA 19

Thus the traveler who through inadvertence decides
at a crossway on a route apparently parallel to the
one he wishes to take, finds, after a long journey,
that he is at a great distance from the point at
which he thought to arrive.

Did I then feel on that memorable occasion an
intense and decisive religious sensation? Not at all.
Alphonse Ratisbonne, worldly and a sceptic, remain-
ing alone a few 1 instants in the church of St. Andrea
delle Fratte in Rome, left it converted to Cathol-
icism, following a mysterious inner vision. The
Jewish musician Hermann, replacing a friend as
organist at a Vesper Service, in a church in Paris,
is suddenly flung to his knees and rises a Catholic
and becomes Father Hermann. Here we have
natural facts which we may discuss and which in
any case are not conversions of Jews, but conver-
sions of souls with unconscious religious needs un-
satisfied; subjugated, enraptured, they totally
abandon themselves to the first revelation offered
them.

But upon a religious nature, subject to an habitual
rule of piety, similar emotions may be produced,
without leading to any results of this kind. I, myself,
certainly experienced a most vivid impression "ithe first
time I was present during a Friday prayer in a great
mosque. But this gave me no desire to become a

20 THE UNKNOWN SANCTUARY

Mussulman, and, however great is the admiration
which I profess for the great monotheistic religion
of these good people, there is no likelihood that I
shall ever embrace Islam. In the fact that I
recount there is certainly something quite different.
Then, too, the Jewish cult does not generally produce
a religious emotion in the Christian, but rather a
feeling of strangeness. All is too new for him, too
different in form from that to which he is accus-
tomed, and which is bound up in his eyes with the
idea of religion. Ordinarily he enjoys precisely the
things borrowed from his own environment; the
songs, the organ, the majesty of the service. That
which is especially Jewish, escapes him. In order
to discover in the traditional Jewish service the
element of adoration, the non-Jew requires an
acquaintance, a veritable initiation; perhaps even
the knowledge of Hebrew, which makes it possible
to penetrate to the meaning of the prayers. It is
therefore all the more interesting to discover what
could possibly strike a young Catholic, suddenly
introduced, without any preparation, into a Jewish
assembly on the Day of Atonement, that had so
marked an effect on his spirit.

That which revealed itself to me at that moment
was not at all the Jewish religion. It was the Jewish
people. The spectacle of that large number of men

NEILA 21

assembled, their shoulders covered by Talitks*,
suddenly disclosed to my eyes a far-off past.
The Hebrews of the Dore Bible were there on their
feet before me. But two details struck me par-
ticularly while I noticed all about me the faithful
bent over their rituals. At first on seeing the prayer-
shawls uniformly worn by all the participants in
the service, I thought that in a way they were all
officiating. Several of them robed in white shrouds
were scattered about here and there in the crowd,
just like the priests who remained in the centre
of the sanctuary. In the second place it seemed
to me that this silent assembly was in expectancy
of something about to happen. What are they wait-
ing for, I asked my companion. This double aspect
which Judaism disclosed to me held nothing that
could trouble the faith of a young Christian such as
I then was. But here was revealed to me at least
very clearly, so that I could understand what fol-
lowed, two characteristic traits; the form of collec-
tive priesthood of which the Judaism of the dis-
persion consisted, and the spirit of expectancy and
of faith in the future which stamps its entire cult
with an unique seal.

In fact, in the synagogue service all Jews^
are equal, all are priests, all may participate in the

*Shawl, worn by the Orthodox Jew at prayer.

22 THE UNKNOWN SANCTUARY

holy functions, even officiate in the name of the
entire community, when they have the required
training. The dignity which distinguished the
Hakham, the doctor, the sage, is not a clerical degree
but rather one of learning and of piety quickened
thru knowledge. The Talith would have given me
the understanding of that peculiarity of Judaism
which would have escaped me, had my attention
not been captured from the first by this spectacle so
new to me, of a multitude of men in white shawls
at prayer. It is thus that rites and symbols often
constitute a more expressive language than the best
of discourses. The practices which have had the
consecration of centuries come to us charged with
the accumulated thoughts of believing generations.
They preserve the poetry, the incomparable power
of evocation. They may be suppressed, but not
replaced.

A precious legacy of antiquity, and yet Judaism's
trend is not toward the past, but toward the future.
An unconquerable faith in the final triumph of the
good and the true has preserved it during the
centuries and permeates it through and through. It
awaits the Messiah. This attitude gives an unusual
aspect to its age-old beliefs. Whenever the
modern conscience busies itself with ideals of social
regeneration, whenever it affirms its will to build

NEILA 23

the city of the future upon the ruins of wrongs
and injustices, it is in communion with the soul of
Judaism as it has not ceased to vibrate in the course
of its long history. Later I was to understand how
the aspirations of national resurrection complete
and define in Israel this attitude of expectancy, so
different from the conceptions of other religions, but
from my first contact this spirit revealed itself to
me in the silent "amida" of the closing of Yom
Kippur.

And this it was that made another impression
upon me, which was less confused, and was to be
more decisive. Fancy a young Christian, brought
up in the naive conception that the Old Testament
had no mission other than preparation for the New
which was definitely to replace it, and that since
the advent of Christianity the role of Israel had
come to an end. The Jew lives on today only as a
blind and powerless witness of the truth of prophe-
cies fulfilled to his hurt. Every Christian brought
up within the pale of the church Chinks of him as
the Wandering Jew of the legend "March, march,
Ahasuerus; wandering and alone, thou bearest the
stigma of hopeless condemnation."

And now suddenly Israel appeared to me, still liv-
ing its own life, with nothing to indicate the foretold
decrepitude. This Judaism of the diaspora

24 THE UNKNOWN SANCTUARY

appeared to me a strongly organized collectivity,
which for nineteen hundred years, in despite of
the will to destroy conjured up against it, continued
to exist for ends that I still did not grasp, but in
which I felt that my Christianity was no longer
directly interested. All my philosophy of history
was confounded. The three years of public life
of Jesus no longer formed its central point. It be-
came a simple episode in the whole. Thus in the
teaching that I had received until that day, I dis-
covered a lacuna, and the premise being false, the
conclusions must be equally false. The legitimacy
of the age-old protestation of Judaism against the
Christian pretensions stood out at this first con-
tact, in a vague way assuredly as yet, but neverthe-
less in such a way that the 1 impression could never
be effaced. Israel has still the right to live. Israel
lives.

This is what I realized on that day. In say-
ing that it was not the Jewish religion, but the
Jewish people which revealed itself to me at that
moment, I set down a fact that was only clear to
me personally. In truth, for the most part concern-
ing the men who surrounded me and who to my
eyes were so visibly of different descent from my
own, the idea of their raison d'etre, of their historic
role, of their powers of resistance and persistence

NEILA 25

was doubtless very vague, almost non-existent.
Nonetheless it emanated from the collective spirit
of these Jews re-gathered. The breath of the race
filled the precincts of the synagogue and my own
soul was penetrated by it.

Beloved and ancient race which holds so much of
grandeur and of moral wealth side by side with so
many defects, some day I shall know some of thy
beautiful spirits, true Jews of biblical times, still
vibrant with ever renewed youth. I shall under-
stand thee and love thee to the point of being able
to say to thee with Ruth, "May the Lord do so to
me and more also, if aught but death part thee and
me." But it was on this Day of Atonement that
my eyes first beheld thee and that I knew that thou
wast ever a people blessed by the Eternal!

When I was a child I was occasionally taken to
visit a very old lady who had been an intrepid
traveler. Thirty-three times in succession she had
pilgrimed to Jerusalem, and on her mantlepiece
she kept small frames brought from Palestine, in
which were enclosed fragments of olive wood and
dried flowers. These precious frames were shown
to me and I piously pressed them to my childish
lips. I was not conscious then of the significance
of a kiss upon the flowers of the Holy Land, but be-
gan to understand from my first visit to the syna-

26 THE UNKNOWN SANCTUARY

gogue. It was the homage unconsciously rendered to
the biblical treasures which come to us from this
sacred soil, to the revelation of the holy "Torah," to
the piety of the Psalms, to the faith of the ancient
prophets, to all that the Hebrew scriptures contain
that is vital to humanity.

And it was also the homage rendered to the peo-
ple of the Bible toward whom the nations have
shown themselves so ungrateful and whom they
have overwhelmed with contempt and injustice
without remembering that from them they have re-
ceived the treasure of revelation; the people who
despite all things resisted, survived, while other
great peoples, Assyrians, Egyptians, Carthaginians,
Greeks, Romans have disappeared from the face of
the earth. Ground to dust among the nations, this
people has nevertheless survived as a living entity--
preserved for providential ends, and on that day
my eyes beheld them.

Would the result have been the same for me, if
instead of entering a synagogue, I had been present
at some great manifestation of Jewish life such as
a Zionist Congress for example? It may possibly
be so, nevertheless in the mood that I then was, if
one take into account my education and my inclina-
tions, one must admit that no other aspect of Juda-
ism could have impressed me to a greater degree

NEILA 27

than its religious vitality, and there is certainly no
other which interprets in more characteristic fashion
the ancient genius and the role of Israel.

This was the revelation that came to me on that
Thursday in October, in the synagogue of Lyons.
And surely words are too inadequate to express any-
thing so confused, so mysterious to me at that
moment; and for some time I could not formulate
that impression in my thoughts, still less interpret
it to the outside world. But within me, like a germ
implanted by the Neila, this revelation was to affirm
itself and grow stronger and stronger.

Near me, within reach of my hand, I noticed a
book of prayer, left on a stall. I opened it. The
unfamiliar characters had the effect upon me of
notes of strange music, that I looked upon with
curiosity. The next day I bought a Hebrew gram-
mar on the Quai, and quite alone I set myself to
study Hebrew.

IV
A SECOND-HAND BOOK

A SHORT time after the event I have just recounted,
I lost my father and my brother in succession. I
remained alone with my tenderly loved mother and
continued my studies, under conditions which gave
me much more liberty than I would have had at the
college. I made use of it in order to continue the
study of Hebrew, and gave myself no rest until I
had learned to read. Soon I was able slowly and
almost correctly to decipher the verses of a little
psalter published by the Bible Society, which I had
succeeded in getting by chance.

But the volume that I had bought, entitled He-
brew Studies, could not take me very far. I can-
not give the name of the author, the title page,
together with the preface, having been torn out at
the time of binding. The reason for this is most
singular. The author protested vehemently against
the Massorah* that had by means of vowel points
determined the pronunciation of the sacred tongue.
He says in his preface, "The time has come to blow

Tradition concerning the Hebrew text.

28

A SECOND-HAND BOOK 29

away the particles of dust that the rabbis have
strewn over the most beautiful pages of the Bible."
The method of reading without vowel points, which
he extolled, the anti-synagogue and anti-massoretic
spirit of this work displeased me, and that is why
I eliminated this preface. The little grammar by
Chabot which I procured a short time thereafter
enabled me to study a less fanciful Hebrew, and I
threw myself into this work with eagerness.

It was strange that I chose to learn the 145th
Psalm by heart after having analysed it word by
word with the help of Latin. I was wholly ignorant
of the fact that it is just this psalm that has a place
of honor in the Jewish liturgy. I still see myself
walking, on a Thursday, hi the gardens of the
Chartreuse repeating the verses one by one until I
knew them without a mistake and asking myself
why the letter nun was lacking in the alphabetic
order of this psalm. I did not attach any religious
meaning to this recital, foreign to the forms of my
own accustomed worship. It was an oddity on my
part possibly mingled with some secret vanity at
being able to pray in a tongue other than that of
the church, but my Catholic faith remained intact
and the impression made by the synagogue seemed
completely forgotten. In reality it slumbered, and

30 THE UNKNOWN SANCTUARY

a discovery made in an old bookshop was soon to
reawaken it and give to it new impetus.

One day, in a basket of books exhibited on the
Quai du Rhone, I took up a small volume, quite
old and apparently ignored by the book-hunters, for
I found it buried in the midst of poor worthless
books. It bore the title "Ceremonies and Customs
at the present time observed among the Jews, trans-
lated from the Italian of Leon of Modena, Rabbi
of Venice" by Sieur de Simonville. The bookseller
sold it to me for two francs "because of the engrav-
ing on copper," a reproduction of a canvas of the
Flemish school, which it carried on the frontispiece.
To me it was worth a fortune and more, and I have
cherished it always.

This work, printed at the Hague by Adrien
Moetjens, 1682, is dedicated to "Monsignore Bos-
suet, one time bishop of Condom, called by His
Majesty to the diocese of Meaux." A note in
writing traced in Chinese ink on the back of the
engraving in the letters and orthography of the
time, informed me that under the name de Simon-
ville, Simon, a one-time priest, disguised himself,
and it was said that he was none other than Richard
Simon, the father of Bible criticism.

In the preface and in the supplement of 166 pages
added to the work of Leon of Modena, the translator

A SECOND-HAND BOOK 31

shows a very special sympathy with Jews and an
evident desire to point out the conformity of their
principles with those of Christians, the purity of
their morals and the beauty of their worship. He
gives proof of profound knowledge in these matters
of which priests in general are most ignorant.

Note with what cleverness he shows the impor-
tance that Judaism should have in the eyes of
Christians. He there compromises the Eagle of
Meaux. "Your excellency," he says, "having proven
that one cannot understand the Christian religion,
if one is not instructed in that of the Jews, whose
faith was its pattern, I thought, being under the
obligation I am to you, that I ought to contribute to
so noble an end. This it is, Sir, that has moved
me to choose a rabbi enlightened in these matters."
And further on: "For who knows these things so
thoroughly as does your Grace, you, I say, who
have so aptly cited in your Treatise of Universal
History, the most rare and most ancient works of
the Jews, and who drew from them with so much
strength of spirit, the truth concerning the most
perplexing mysteries of the Christian religion. I
am persuaded that if your Grace will have the
goodness to permit me, I shall be sustained herein
by all the world."

32 THE UNKNOWN SANCTUARY

There is something of the biting irony of the
Provincials in this hyperbolic dedication.

Let us listen to the Sieur de Simonville speaking
seriously: "Those who compiled the New Testament
being Jews, it is impossible to explain it, except
by their relation to Judaism. The doctrine is al-
most the same, and as to the morals, the decalogue
is common to them and to us." Again, "As to the
Jewish traditions rejected by our Lord, he only pre-
tended to combat some false traditions that the
Jewish scholars had added to the older ones and
when this wise Master sent us to the written law
Scrutamini Scripturas* one must not imagine that
he wished to send us back to the simple text
of the scripture, but to this same text explained by
the wise men who had followed Moses." "They
are seated," he says in speaking of these doctors,
"in the seat of Moses, observe do that which
they tell you." The author takes pains to tell us
that "The first fathers of the Church revered the
Sabbath as Sunday, that the prayers of Jews are
most pious and differ but little from our own, and
that the Jews not only excel in prayers, but also
in charity." Were it right to reproach them for
their formalism, for the value they attach to minute
practices? It is true, observes the Sieur de Simon-

*Search the Scriptures.

A SECOND-HAND BOOK 33

ville, that the Jews make much of the outside of
things, but that is, they say, because all outward
actions are but to direct the inward. Thus in wash-
ing their hands, they think of cleansing their con-
science; in abstaining from impure animals, they
prevent themselves from committing crimes; and
they consider the precepts for external things as
having an inner application.

I read this entire work at one sitting with ex-
traordinary delight. I do not think any reading
ever interested me to such a degree. When I had
read it from beginning to end, I began it again.
The Hebrews of the Dore Bible took on life again
little by little in my eyes, and this time I naturally
associated them with the faithful I had seen at
prayer in the synagogue. Thanks to. Leon of
Modena, who had accurately described for me, with-
out any apparent thought of apologetics, religious
rites, their liturgy, their practices and the laws which
regulate their conduct even to the slightest details,
the Jews became again for me a living people, per-
fectly organized, subject to a wise discipline which
made sure their miraculous preservation. All the
charm of the family life, all the poetry of the life
of the ghetto, somberly portrayed by the Rabbi of
Venice, revealed itself to my imagination, with in-
credible clarity, not as a new discovery, but as an

34 THE UNKNOWN SANCTUARY

old fact that I had forgotten. It seemed to me that
I had always known this people on which Judaism
had left so strong an imprint and who exist in the
midst of other peoples without mingling with them,
"respectful of laws, obedient to their ruler, praying
God to preserve them in peace and in gladness,
that His aims may be accomplished, that His lands
may multiply and that He may love our nation."

But it was written that a combination of minute
circumstances would unite to effect a predestined
result, I still had in my pocket, after repeated
reading, the little book by Leon of Modena when
chancing to read one day the "Messager Boiteux"*
of Strasbourg, I noticed the Jewish calendar follow-
ing that of the Christian year. I tore out the page
to keep it and examine it at leisure. Thus I learned
on which day that year Yom Kippur would fall,
which the Rabbi of Venice had explained to me,
and I made my plan to return to the synagogue
on that day. This time I saw the procession of
the Sepharim and I heard the tinklings of the little
bells, which I knew to be Rimonim. I also knew
from which passage the reading was taken in the
holy scroll. The service interested me more than
on my first visit.

I had a professor who loved me much and for

*A popular almanac.

A SECOND-HAND BOOK 35

whom I myself felt a sincere affection. The Abbe
Neyret was an excellent priest, pious and gentle,
but his mind was closed to everything foreign to
theology. When he learned that I had returned to
the synagogue, he seemed disturbed. Pr' p sts have
a peculiar intuition concerning things which may
constitute danger to the faith. He had me come to
him on a certain afternoon, and in a most amiable
manner, interrogated me at length concerning
Judaism, assuming a lively curiosity about it. I
fell into the trap and exhibited my knowledge as a
college-boy who knows his text-book thoroughly.
Informed by the teachings of Leon of Modena T an-
swered all the questions fully; the ceremonies and
customs observed today by the Jews being no longer
a secret to me.

When he had elicited from me all that he desired
to know, the Abbe changed his tone; his face dark-
ened and he asked me quite naturally from whom
I had received my information. It would have
been easy to jive the true explanation and even
to show the little volume. But I reflected that if
I showed the book it would be confiscated and I
cared too much about it to be willing to lose it. I
stammered some unlikely reply, making a pretext
of some reading and conversations, and the priest
saw clearly that I was not telling the truth. He
grew more severe and declared that to be so well

36 THE UNKNOWN SANCTUARY

informed I must have seen some rabbi, in which he
was only half mistaken, adding that in his zeal for
Judaism, this rabbi had no doubt sought to deflect
me from Catholicism. It is clear that the good
priest pictured rabbis in his own likeness. I agreed
that they certainly would be animated by the most
ardent spirit of proselytism, but at the same time
protested that I had never known one. I was
severely reproved for forgetting that the Jews had
crucified our Lord. Then being on the defensive
I replied that it seemed to me most unfair that ^his
act should be imputed to those Jews I had seen, and
at that moment, for the first time, the absurdity of
an accusation which in other circumstances might
not at all have shocked me, presented itself to my
mind.

Abbe Neyret concluded tfiat my Catholic faith
was in peril and spoke of it to my mother, who
seemed greatly alarmed. As yet my faith was in no
way shaken, but to have arouse'd within me the
possibility that it might be, sufficed to make me
conscious of the change that had come over my con-
ception of religious history. In his love for me, the
worthy priest thought that he must do something!
to warn me of the danger which he foresaw. He
thereupon decided on means, which as will be seen
by what followed, came to have very different con-
sequences from those he Had hoped for.

V
THE ABBES L&MANN

AT this time there lived in Lyons twin brothers,
Catholic priests of Jewish origin, the Abbes Joseph
and Augustin Lemann. They had been converted
after a grave illness that both had suffered while at
the Lycee of Lyons, at about the age of eighteen
years. The good sisters who had nursed them
with devotion became interested in their souls and
the Christian seed that their solicitude sowed fell
upon well prepared ground. Barely restored to
health, the brothers asked for baptism.

Orphans, they had been brought up by an uncle
who apparently had occupied himself but little with
their spiritual needs. Those who have done nothing
to transmit a religious heritage to the young souls
in their charge ought to be the last to be surprised
by conversions, which under such conditions seem
to me perfectly explicable and even justifiable. The
uncle seemed none the less irritated by the decision
of the young men, and the Quai des Celestines,
where they resided, resounded more than once with
sounds of the terrible scenes he made there. These

37

38 THE UNKNOWN SANCTUARY

violent outbreaks did not cause the brothers to
swerve from their determination. A few years later
they entered the Seminary of St. Sulpice to con-
secrate themselves to the priesthood, and there it
was that they learned Hebrew, though they remained
mediocre Hebrew scholars.

There was a strange contradiction in the Lemanns.
On the one hand, they were of an extraordinarily
marked Jewish type, and it must be admitted far
from the beauty of the oriental. Their originality
of character, their gentle manners, their mutual at-
tachment, which made even a momentary separa-
tion unbearable, condemned them to live alone. At
first, appointed curates in a parish of Lyons, they
were soon found to be unequal to an active ministry,
and they were assigned to the post of chaplains in
an institution of deaf-mutes. It was there in a
suburb of the great city, in the vast and silent depth
of this place, that the greater part of their lives was
spent. There they lived in a sort of spiritual ghetto,
having but little contact with their brothers of the
Lyons clergy, who were not very sympathetic to-
wards them, And these Israelites by birth, to whom
the study of Hebrew had opened the treasures of the
Scriptures, gave themselves up to all the frills of
modern Catholic worship. The worship of the Holy
Infancy, of the Holy Face, of the Sacred Heart, of St.

THE ABBES LEMANN 39

Joseph, of the Rosary, of Lourdes, made up the es-
sential elements of their piety.

Nevertheless, when they were heard in the Catho-
lic pulpit, they assumed an attitude of ancient nobil-
ity. They were then distinguished and admired
orators. They preached in various towns, with some
measure of success, during Lent, and also on other
occasions. In order to condemn the attacks of the
Republic upon the rights of the church, they
achieved the inspired accents of an Isaiah or of a
Jeremiah. Their nervous, vibrant words, falling in
majestic sentences, their picturesque style enhanced
by biblical citations and memories, the strangeness
of their physiognomies endowed them with the fas-
cination of prophets. They loudly proclaimed that
they were Israelites, descendants of Abraham, au-
thentic representatives of the true people of God.
How well I understood the impression they must
have made later on poor Paul Loewengard! It was
no doubt the first time this poet of ardent and un-
quiet soul came upon men who proudly called them-
selves Jews and who claimed to have dedicated their
lives exclusively to the salvation of their people.

An apostolic desire had in fact not ceased to ani-
mate the Lemanns. We find a significant proof of it
in the history of the postulatum which they pre-
sented in 1870 to the Council of the Vatican. Thus

40 THE UNKNOWN SANCTUARY

is named a sort of written request by which the
assembled council is entreated to examine some
particular question. Their aim was to persuade the
church to take a first step toward the Jewish people,
a paternal invitation to the very unfortunate nation
of Israel. "We have felt the strength and confidence
to come to you," they said in their supplication to
the Fathers of the Council, "to implore your well-
known mercy in favor of a nation which is our own,
that of the Israelites."

The postulatum, approved by Pius IX, was pre-
sented successively to 510 Fathers of the Council
for their signatures. One can with difficulty envisage
the innumerable circumlocutions which this im-
plies, and the patience, the perseverance with which
the two brothers labored to achieve it. Certain
bishops showed themselves obstinate, and when the
Lemanns spoke to one of them of the place which
the Jews sought to occupy in the divine plan: "For-
sooth," said the prelate, "I see you advancing 1 You
already dream of replacing us." Mgr. Antonia Colli,
bishop of Alexandria, who had made it a rule never
to give his signature, remained immovable. At the
end of the arguments, the two brothers threw them-
selves at his feet, saying, "Monseigneur, you can-
not refuse to give your name in favor of the people
who gave to you Jesus and Mary." The prelate was

THE ABBES LEMANN 41

moved. "True," said he, "I cannot refuse. I shall
make an exception in favor of the Israelites."

Some of them accompanied their signatures by
touching words which the zealous neophytes joy-
fully received. The last to sign was Mgr. Bonnet,
Cardinal Archbiship of Bordeaux: "I love the
Israelites and they love me," he declared. "I will
say voluntarily, as does my predecessor Mgr. de
Cheverus, who was reproached because of his rela-
tion to the Jews, if we are not to meet some day in
heaven, at least let me have the joy of meeting them
on earth."

But the question of papal infallibility having ab-
sorbed the attention of the Council, the postulatum
of the Abbes Lemann was relegated to another
session. These details at least explain the sentiments
which animated the two brothers, and the influence
they were able to exert upon me in their own way
when I entered into relations with them can be readi-
ly understood.

In fact, it was to Augustin Lemann that my pro-
fessor, the Abbe Neyret, thought wise to send me
when he believed my Catholic faith in peril, in order
to efface from my mind every trace of my very
superficial contact with the synagogue. He wished
me to accept him as my father confessor. The day
I was introduced to him truly marked a new era

42 THE UNKNOWN SANCTUARY

in my religious evolution, of which the first step had
been so singular, and, though I was not conscious of
it, so decisive. This Jew in cassock, who told his
rosary and made his devotions to the Sacred Heart,
was to continue against every effort and despite
himself, by degrees slow but sure, the initiation
that the Rabbi of Venice, Leon of Modena, had be-
gun within me.

He received me with the greatest kindness. This
man, whose altogether Hebrew type seemed so out
of keeping with the ecclesiastical environment of
Lyons, possessed to the highest degree that quality,
eminently Jewish, leb tob, the good heart. He did
not take seriously the fears expressed by my pro-
fessor, for it did not seem possible to him that a
young Catholic, piously brought up, could in any
wise be attracted to the Synagogue. The good priest
only saw the unlikelihood of such a supposition, and
the possibility of making use of my ardor for re-
ligious studies to serve the development of my Cath-
olic faith seemed most likely to him.

It did not take me long to perceive that his knowl-
edge of Judaism stopped at the destruction of the
second Temple. He was all but ignorant of the in-
teresting facts which Leon of Modena had imparted
to me. All post-biblical history resolved itself for
him in the unfortunate influence exercised by the

THE ABBES LEMANN 43

Talmud, in regard to which he professed a holy
horror. It was quite evident that he himself had
never navigated upon that vast sea; when he spoke
of the dangerous rocks to be encountered there, he
only quoted the unreliable testimony of Christian
apologists. "Without the Talmud," he repeated
and this reflection contains an implicit statement
which deserves to be remembered "without the
Talmud the Jews would all have been converted
long ago."

One might as well say they would no longer con-
tinue to exist, and I did not fail to ask him how it
came about that the Church, so respectful of the
individual rites of diverse peoples, sought to con-
found the Israelites with the Latin multitude, in
stripping them of every religious characteristic.

The objection could not but be embarrassing to a
Jew who had remained so proud of the prerogatives
of his race. "I doubt not," replied the Abbe Lemann,
"the Mass will one day be said in Hebrew in Jeru-
salem, but today we have no choice, we must
abandon the darkness of Jewish blindness for the
great light of Rome."

What troubled me at first concerning Augustin
Lemann were the religious practices which he re-
commended to me. From my mother I had inherited
a serif us, sensible piety, far removed from those in-

44 THE UNKNOWN SANCTUARY

sipid devotions which have sprouted like parasitic
plants from the old trunk of Catholicism. Above all
I loved the services held with dignity, the beautiful
liturgy, the plain song, the psalms. As a child, de-
spite my adoration of Mary, I always felt a certain
repugnance to saluting her fifty times in succession
with the same words. In other days a taint of
Jansenism would surely have been found in me and
in my mother. All those forms of religion toward
which my new father confessor was directing me,
instead of attaching me more firmly to the church,
as he hoped they would, began to awaken within me
the spirit of criticism, since they impelled me to
make the distinction between what I must practice
and what I must in conscience reject. And when
the spirit of criticism is once awakened in a Cath-
olic it soon finds material for thought.

The Abbe Augustin Lemann was professor of
Holy Scriptures and of Hebrew in the Catholic Uni-
versity of Lyons. He offered to admit me to his
course, frequented by about twenty seminarists. I
was enchanted by his proposal and the young lay-
man distinguished himself from the first lessons in
Hebrew reading, of which my neighbors could only
painfully decipher the syllables. I articulated the
ket and the ain in a manner that astonished them.

We translated the "Songs of the Degrees" shire

THE ABBES LEMANN 45

hamma'aloth, and I truly believe we never descended
from these degrees; nevertheless the professor once
interrupted this lesson, possibly entirely on my ac-
count. This was in order to translate the Vllth
Chapter of Isaiah. We know that this chapter con-
tains a verse on which the Catholic dogma of the
virgin birth of the Messiah is founded: "Therefore
the Lord Himself shall give you a sign: behold the
alma shall conceive and bear a son, and shall call
him name Immanuel, God with us." Christians see
in this passage a prophecy relative to the Virgin
Mary, and that it may carry weight, construe it to
show that the word alma signifies virgin and nothing
else. The fact that there is, in Hebrew, another word,
betula, having the same meaning, without possible
contradiction, does not trouble them at all. M.
Lemann studied five or six biblical passages succes-
sively with us where this word alma is used. Among
these verses there is at least one which seems to
furnish an absolutely contrary significance to that
for which we were searching; I saw for the first
time that theologians trouble themselves little about
the evidence, where the equally glorious fact of the
virginity of Mary is concerned. M. Lemann had
patiently built a monument of subtleties on this
question from the height of which he triumphed,
smiling behind his glasses.

46 THE UNKNOWN SANCTUARY

Aside from the fact that this type of exegesis
seemed to me quite shocking, I was disconcerted in
perceiving that the doctrinal edifice of the true
church was bound up with a problem of this sort
and rested in the main on so fragile a foundation; a
doubtful interpretation of a Hebrew word. I was
still more disturbed after reading the entire chapter.
I discerned with the aid of the context that the
matter with which the prophet evidently dealt was
a contemporary event and not the Messianic epoch.

I then set myself to study other prophetic texts,
most frequently brought to the support of Catholic
dogma; the allusion to the scepter of Judah in the
benediction of the dying Jacob, the prophecy of the
seventy weeks in Daniel, the description of the Man
of Sorrows in the LUIrd chapter of Isaiah, the well
known verses of the XXIInd Psalm, concerning
which the Massoretes are accused of inaccuracy, fin-
ally the various passages quoted by the Evangelist
St. Matthew with the words, "That it might be ful-
filled which was spoken by the prophets." It was
clear to me that the interpretation given to these
different texts was arbitrary, forced and altogether
conventional. Read in French they still seemed to
me at times to have a vague Catholic turn, but in
Hebrew they signified nothing at all, or at least
something quite different.

THE ABBES LEMANN 47

The most immediate result of my study of ex-
egesis was that I was led to recognize that the Jews
were quite right not to embrace Christianity upon
scriptural proofs so inconclusive. My Christian be-
liefs concerning the advent of the Messiah in the
person of Jesus, predicted, I was told, in every de-
tail, by all the Hebrew prophets, suffered a decisive
blow from which they never recovered. This change
took place without my having to undergo one of
those conflicts which usually accompany the crisis
of the soul. I had in no sense the feeling that I
was losing my faith, but on the contrary that my
faith was being purified and was coming closer to
the religion which was historically that of Jesus.
This was in effect the passing phase, which my
Christianity took at that time, and M. Lemann, who
always remembered his origin with pride, contrib-
uted unconsciously toward my evolution. He asked
me to accompany him on the evening of December
8th, the day of the Immaculate Conception. Only
Lyons could organize such a festival of lights in
honor of a theological abstraction. The Basilica of
Fourviere was dazzling with a thousand lights like
a fairy fortress, and everywhere windows were illu-
minated in honor of the Virgin. The graceful curves
of the two rivers were revealed in fairy-like beauty,
and the merchants, the Israelites as well as the

48 THE UNKNOWN SANCTUARY

others, made the play of colors serve as footlights
of gas for their richest displays so that the profane
curiosity of the crowds pressing through the streets
might also be satisfied.

We traced our way with difficulty to an outlet
beyond the Place Bellecour with its splendid fagades,
and succeeded in getting to the Quai Tilsitt on the
left bank of the Saone, at the foot of Fourviere
the immobile synagogal front on this quay forming
the only somber spot in the midst of the general il-
luminations. M. Lemann stopped to contemplate on
the one side the dark mass of the synagogue, and on
the other the hill where the basilica rose, amidst the
Bengalese fires, like a magic apparition. "And to
think," he murmured with his sacerdotal and solemn
intonation, "to think that it is a Jewess that they
celebrate in this way."

Why is it that important facts often escape one's
memory without leaving a trace behind, while small
details, seemingly insignificant, simple words spoken
by chance, certain inflections of the voice, certain
glances of the eyes, engrave themselves on one's
mind never to be effaced? Therein lies one of the
mysteries of that mysterious thing called memory.
But the fact is that I still hear M. Le~mann formula-
ting that banal thought, while he contemplated the

THE ABBES LEMANN 49

wonderful display of lights in honor of the Immacu-
late Conception, with ecstatic gaze.

The fact of the Jewish origin of Christianity over
which Christians do not generally linger, presented
itself vividly to my mind, and at the same time the
contrast between the somberness of the synagogue
and the surrounding illuminations acquired for me a
symbolic value. The Abbe Augustin Lemann did not
cease to repeat to me, that Judaism and Christian-
ity are two phases, two steps in one and the same re-
ligion. These two forms do not succeed each other,
but coexist and oppose each other, and there is a
semblance of logic, in that the authentic repre-
sentatives of the first are in the right when in conflict
with those of the second on controversial points.

Soon this Jew who took such pains to identify the
alma of Isaiah with the Virgin Mary of the Chris-
tians, and who remained so proud of the fact that she
was a daughter of Israel, ended by giving me a feel-
ing of disturbed equilibrium and harmony. Not be-
cause in the exercise of the right of conscience he
had embraced the religion of his choice, but because
belonging by race, by ancestral ties to a more ancient
tradition, designed to govern the new and to correct
its errors, he was by virtue of birth destined for
other ends.

SO THE UNKNOWN SANCTUARY

On the following Yom Kippur, I returned to the
synagogue, this time with a makzor or prayer ritual,
which I had ordered from Paris.

VI
THE TEFILLIN

WE are not always conscious of the changes that
our thoughts and beliefs are undergoing. Much hap-
pens within us of which we have no knowledge, and
there is need of some unforeseen and decisive occur-
rence to make us conscious of the changes that un-
awares have come over our inner world.

Those who seek in this narrative the proof of a
sudden illumination which led a young Christian of
the Catholic faith, such as was I, to accept the
Jewish doctrine without reserve, will find nothing of
the kind. There was in truth, one hour in my life,
and I shall tell of it later, when I felt myself truly
and finally converted, but not by the act of passing
from one religion to another. And this conversion
only came to pass much later, after many conflicts,
doubts, backslidings, after a long series of spiritual
searchings which I cannot describe, so slow and im-
perceptible was it even to me.

No doubt examples of instantaneous conversions
could be cited, which, in the twinkling of an eye,
projected a human soul into a region wholly new of

51

52 THE UNKNOWN SANCTUARY

peace and certitude. But even in these very excep-
tions, who can tell what were the hidden influences
at work, that finally led to the shattering of the inner
balance? Saul of Tarsus is thrown to earth on the
road to Damascus, but in relating this extraordinary
transformation, the writer does not enlighten us con-
cerning the state of mind of the convert, from the
day when as a mute witness to the stoning of
Stephen, he held the garments of the martyr during
his execution. For my part I believe that in every
conversion which bears fruit of a moral quality,
there is the direct intervention of God, but that does
not shut out the progressive and often unconscious
preparation which makes the passing to a new life
possible. The realm of the Spirit has its laws as
has the realm of nature. A religious metamorphosis
is only mysterious to us because its deeper evolution
escapes us.

My readers will then be mistaken if in seeing me
return to the synagogue for the third time on Yom
Kippur, they imagine that the Catholic faith of my
youth was ended. Only confusedly understanding it,
I was yet to become captive to the fascination ex-
ercised over me by the ancient religion of Israel
with which my soul had come into contact, and M.
Augustin Lemann continued to have in me not only

THE TEFILLIN 53

a pupil who did him honor, but a penitent, docile
to his spiritual directions.

But I want to make a disclosure to my un-
known readers and friends, and leave it to them to
derive the lesson which may be drawn from it. In
the attraction that Judaism had for me, I think I am
able to indicate to them, if not the initial cause, at
lease the medium which made it enduring, and
those changes which my religious faith was to under-
go. This was the Hebrew language.

At that period of my life, the Jewish doctrine was
still too little known to me to create a really pro-
found conviction within me. What I had learned
about it came to me solely thru the channel of the
Old Testament, and here the influence of the Church
which had taught it to me, in stamping upon the
entire history of the Jewish people its figurative
interpretation of the Messianic advent, imposed it-
self on my soul despite matters of detail of which I
was critical. I could then believe that my religious
curiosity once satisfied, my interest in the synagogue
would have no serious consequences and that I would
become weary of taking part in services where the
lack of decorum contrasted painfully with my child-
hood customs. Encouraged by my teachers, I would
finally have entered the seminary for which I was
destined from my youth, or if I had renounced the

54 THE UNKNOWN SANCTUARY

priesthood, I would probably today be an attorney
in some parish of Lyons, a more or less tepid Catho-
lic like so many others, maintaining a respectful def-
erence to the commands of the Church, and giving
my voice at elections to the conservative candidate
against the representative of advanced thought. But
there was the Hebrew the Hebrew exercised a fas-
cination over me which decided everything.

Many others have known the indescribable charm
that the language of the Bible holds. As I did,
they have sensed the mystic perfume these venerable
texts exhale, like the subtle aroma of dried flowers
between the leaves of old books. Through the He-
brew syllables with their sonorous cadence, some-
thing of the soul of Israel reached me. A biblical
passage or a shred of a prayer out of the ritual,
which I succeeded in translating, spoke to me of
Judaism in a more penetrating manner, and was
more menacing to my faith than all the learned dis-
courses of a convinced and informed Israelite with
the best intentions in the world could have been.
When I opened my psalter the words had a sig-
nificance for me, an emotional and religious value
that I could never again find in French or in Latin.

One day when at the synagogue, trying not
without difficulty, to find myself in my mahzor,* my

*Hebrew prayer book of the holyday service.

THE TEFILLIN 55

neighbor said to me brusquely, "You make a pre-
tence at reading, for you are not a Jew, that is
clear." In reply and without taking umbrage at
this discourteous observation, I read a line of my
ritual to the ill-bred man, and translated it for him.
He seemed much surprised. "It is certainly extra-
ordinary, I would have wagered you were not a
Jew. And you can translate! You know more
about it than I do." I was inwardly flattered by
this reply, and the thought that my knowledge of
Hebrew rendered me in a certain sense more Jewish
than my interlocutor, was singularly agreeable to
me.

If Abbe Lemann had been a psychologist,
warned by his first experience of the influence thai
Hebrew could exercise over me, instead of making
the study of it easy, he would have forbidden me
access to his course in the Catholic University. In
approving of my taste for Hebraic studies he was
unconsciously controverting the goal he had in mind.
On one occasion he even gave me the opportunity
to make a sort of public profession of Judaism.

It happened thus. One morning, our professor
brought a young Syrian to his lecture course, an
Israelite by birth, converted and ordained by the
Jesuits of Beyrout. To show him the progress his
students had made, he asked each one of them to

56 THE UNKNOWN SANCTUARY

read or recite some verse in the Hebrew. When
my turn came I recited the first paragraph of the '
Skema* A little Jewish child could have done as
much, but in the environment of Hebraizing sem-
inarists this text was unknown, and it brought me
congratulations from the master. The foreign vis-
itor was probably the only one who was astonished
by the choice I had made, and by the idea that had
come to me to learn this passage by heart. As to
M. Lemann, so great was his simplicity and his
ignorance of the Jewish religion, that he only saw in
this recitation a proof of my interest in sacred
studies, so he praised me warmly and said to me at
the close of the lesson, that, once a priest, I would
make an excellent teacher of Hebrew. Thus it was
that by a whole series of circumstances and fugitive
but repeated impressions, Providence was leading
me towards the path in which it had destined me to
walk.

It was also the Hebrew that determined the de-
cisive crisis of my religious evolution. I have
spoken of the" forms that clothed my youthful
Catholic piety. It was only at the college that
I became acquainted with certain devotional prac-
tices. My mother never compelled me to wear

""Declaration of the cardinal doctrine of the Jewish faith
monotheism.

THE TEFILLIN 57

scapular nor medals. However, one day after hav-
ing re-read, in my Leon of Modena, the description
of the Tefillin* the desire came to me to make some-
thing of the kind for myself. With the greatest care
I copied in beautiful square writing that same text
of the Shema and enclosed it in little bags which
I accustomed myself to wearing on my person. I
knew not exactly how to explain to myself the mean-
ing I attached to such an object of piety. Possibly
it seemed to me that a custom which without doubt
obtained in the primitive church of Jerusalem,
ought be particularly venerated by a Hebraizing
Christian. All the same the fact here recounted
assumes an importance which in reality it did not
have, and the result proves that I was not yet as
detached from Christianity as such an act would
suggest. It came about that my mother discovered
my improvised phylacteries, and the suffering it
caused her was the gleam which threw an unlocked
for light upon my strange and complex state of
mind.

When two years before this time Abbe Neyret
had expressed his fears touching me to my mother,
M. Lemann with his kindly optimism had promptly
dissipated the concern which she felt, but the dis-

* Phylacteries worn at morning prayers by the Orthodox
Jew, as prescribed in Exodus XIII, 16.

58 THE UNKNOWN SANCTUARY

covery of my Tefillin was a terrible blow to her.
She believed not only that the fears of my professor
were well-founded and that I had lost the faith, but
that I had also been converted to Judaism. Her
anguish was so great that she could not contain her-
self. She burst into tears, and the reproaches she
made to me amidst her sobs evinced the utmost
despair.

I was stirred to the depths of my being at the
thought that I could cause such sorrow to my
mother, and I do not think I ever suffered so much
in all my life as at that moment. Great was my
sorrow many years thereafter when my dearly loved
mother had left me, after having made with won-
drous resignation the renunciation of her life, pre-
occupied only by the desire to spare me the agony
of last farewells. Great was my grief, though my
own faith, which was in unity with hers, helped me
to serenity, while the thought of having pained her
through any fault of mine grieved me unutterably.
There was nothing I was not ready to do to stop
her tears. I threw myself into her arms. I swore
to her that she was mistaken, that I was now, and
would always remain a Catholic, that nothing would
ever separate me from her, and that I would im-
mediately destroy everything that seemed a menace
in her eyes.

THE TEFILLIN 59

The deep distress that I manifested brought back
calm to her spirit. She dried her tears, and with
the strength of soul of Monica, Mother of Augustine,
began to speak to me in the most logical way. "My
child," said she, "thou art at the age when the faith
of young people usually undergoes a crisis, but thou
wilt emerge victorious, if thou follow my advice.
All that I ask of thee, is to continue to pray each
day, to go with me to mass on Sunday, and to seek
to acquire a more profound knowledge of Catholic
doctrine. It were unpardonable in thee if thou wert
not to do at least as much to preserve the Christian
faith, as thou hast done in exposing thyself to the
loss of it."

These words of my mother made a profound im-
pression upon me. I understood all their wisdom,
and it seemed to me at that moment that God Him-
self had made his will known to me. I promised
to conform to all that was asked of me. My bags
of TefilUn were burnt on the spot, but strangely
enough my mother did not subject the little volume
of Leon of Modena to the same fate, nor my book
of Hebrew prayers, neither did she dream of exact-
ing the promise from me not to return to the syna-
gogue. I could not but see in this circumstance a
new proof that all things were providentially ar-
ranged toward a predetermined end.

60 THE UNKNOWN SANCTUARY

The Abbe Neyret, informed of what had hap-
pened, thoroughly approved of the stand taken by
my mother. He placed in my hands the four vol-
umes of the "fitudes philosophiques sur le Christian-
isme" by Auguste Nicolas, and he was convinced
that I would make a serious study of it. I was not
forbidden to continue to frequent the course on the
Holy Writings and Hebrew at the Catholic Univer-
sity, but as the spiritual leadership of M. Lemann
did not seem to have yielded satisfactory results,
the Abbe Neyret chose another confessor for me in
the person of a Dominican father to whom he him-
self conducted me.

Father Henri presented the most striking contrast
to my preceding mentor. His fine head ornamented
by a crown of beautiful hair, cut according to the
rule of Dominic, had the expression of majesty
and gentleness which a deep inner life makes
habitual. By his affectionate reception he imme-
diately inspired confidence in me. It was not long
before he demonstrated to me the truth of the
Messianic prophecies. His course was altogether
moral, and bore the stamp of suppleness which
showed practice in dealing with souls. So that my
Catholic faith might be re-affirmed, he left me free
to study the Old and the New Testaments, and all
those works that might facilitate intelligence con-

THE TEFILLIN 61

cerning them, with the one condition that I tell him
of the doubts which might come to me, and of the
difficulties that I might encounter.

This manner of understanding my needs of the
moment flattered my youthful vanity, and I set my-
self to study with ardor. Father Henri left an im-
pression of serious piety and of consummate spiritual
knowledge with me. I saw him every week with real
pleasure, which had nothing of the sensation of
strangeness that I felt in contact with M. Lemann,
who was not at all surprised about the new arrange-
ments, and never once asked me the reason for my
choice of a new confessor. In this respect the
Catholic enjoys the utmost liberty, and no one in-
terferes in a matter which alone concerns his own
conscience.

The guidance of Father Henri was most profit-
able to me, and yet it was this man of God who had
the most sincere desire to initiate! me into the splen-
dors of the Catholic faith, it was this religious saint
whose soul was all charity, who caused me to per-
ceive one day, by a simple reply, the spirit of
intolerance dominant in the church, the logical con-
sequence of the system of doctrinal authority and
infallibility. It is difficult for me to cite this word,
for it throws a painful shadow upon a figure which
remains in my memory aureoled with respect, but

62 THE UNKNOWN SANCTUARY

all fanaticisms, belonging to whatever school they
may, must expiate the excesses they so often com-
mit. I do not make of it a special attack upon the
Church, but in general against the dangerous error,
held in different degrees in other religious places,
that the truth can be served by the despotic abuse
of power, by any tyranny whatsoever over con-
science.

As I was talking with the Dominican of the
command given by God to the Hebrews for the
complete destruction of the Canaanites, according to
the texts of Deuteronomy, I said to him that since
the New Testament is animated by an entirely dif-
ferent spirit from the Old, since the God of love
takes the place here of the God of vengeance, I
found it difficult to understand why the Church at
the period of the Inquisition had put so many Jews
and heretics to torture. "Ahl my son," said Father
Henri to me, his eyes raised to heaven with an
accent of restrained fervor, "why were not more of
them thrown to the flames?"

This word which escaped from the lips of the
man of religion, and which no doubt expressed his
ardent zeal for the purity of the faith, was to me a
revelation of a state of mind that stupefied me. It
was as though an abyss had opened before me.
Could it be possible that true religion could comport

THE TEFILLIN 63

with such sentiments? I instinctively felt that such
intolerance could not be the expression of absolute
truth, and my doubts of the divinity of the Church
reawakened from that day.

It was not to be long before matters were pre-
cipitated by the entrance upon the scene of another
personage who at about this time played an impor-
tant part in my religious development.

In an humble habitation on the ground floor of
the house in which I dwelt in Lyons, there lived
a sort of philosopher of a strange winsomeness, a
man of one book, the Bible, of which the verses
always furnished appropriate occasions for his sen-
tentious discourse. Father Staehlin was a Swiss, of
the Canton of Thurgovie, by profession a simple
cobbler. Interested by the original ideas of this
excellent man, I asked my mother to permit me to
have him come up in the evenings to give me lessons
in German. He corrected long translations which I
submitted to him, and gave me exercises in conversa-
tion. When I learned that. he was a Protestant, I
incontinently undertook to convert him to Cathol-
icism, and religion was the habitual theme of our
conversations. But my Thurgovian was a re-
doubtable adversary, and his thorough knowledge
of the Bible gave him a superiority over me which
humiliated me. When I found myself embarrassed

64 THE UNKNOWN SANCTUARY

in order to reply to his denfals, I changed the sub-
ject, secretly intending to find the explanations
through Father Henri, and more than once the argu-
ments of the Dominican helped me to refute the
attacks of Father Staehlin upon the dogmas of
the Church.

These friendly controversies, in which I took a
keen interest, were most useful to me, for in oppos-
ing one against the other, the two great Christian
conceptions, that of Catholic Orthodoxy and the
Reformation, altogether new to me since I knew
nothing but what the book of Auguste Nicholas
had taught me, their study contributed to make me
realize the weak sides of Christianity. According
to the word of the Evangelist himself, "Every house
divided against itself shall not stand."

In the meantime, I inquired of the Christian
philosopher, to which communion he belonged.
He told me repeatedly that he belonged to the
Universal church, but this confession of faith proud-
ly set up against that of Catholicism did not satisfy
my curiosity. The idea of an invisible church,
mystically embracing all the true disciples of Jesus,
was too foreign for me to be able to comprehend it
as it was presented to me by the Protestant cobbler.
I insisted on his making me acquainted with the
church which he frequented, and he at once offerer'

THE TEFILLIN 65

to conduct me thither. My mother, knowing that
Father Henri was encouraging my efforts to convert
Father Staehlin, permitted me to accompany him
one evening to a meeting, which, he told me, would
be particularly interesting. No doubt she believed
that my Catholic faith would thereby become
strengthened, and it would not be bad for me to
know the dissenters at close range. This reasoning
was that of an enlightened Catholic, whose beliefs
concerning the divinity of the Church had never been
disturbed. And she proved to be right, insofar as the
Catholicism which I was finally to reach though it
was not, to speak truly, that of Rome, was what her
fine Christian heart foresaw across the ecclesiastical
barriers that separate believers.

VII
THE CALL OF SALVATION

So ONE evening I went with Father Staehlin to the
meeting of which he had spoken to me. It was in
a sordid corner of the Guillotiere, the immense
Lyons Faubourg, in the midst of a population that
made one think of the quarters in London where
Dickens placed the worst adventures of Oliver
Twist. We entered into a low room furnished with
benches which gradually filled up with a noisy
crowd, Flags and placards bearing biblical verses
decorated the walls, and the back of the room was
occupied by a platform where there were men in
red jersies, women wearing odd-looking hats, and
others furnished with trumpets, tambourines and ac-
cordions, altogether forming the strangest spectacle,
and to me the least religious that could be imagined.

It was a hall of the Salvation Army. Commander
Booth, become through her marriage Commissioner
Booth Clibborn, had established such centres of
evangelical activity in various towns of France and
this one of Lyons prospered at this time.

The meeting began; hymns, improvised prayers,

66

THE CALL OF SALVATION 67

addresses succeeded each other in the usual way,
and the entire scene upset my notions of the condi-
tions required for a religious service to such a degree
that I cannot describe my astonishment. I did find
in this assemblage, a vague resemblance to the mis-
sions occasionally organized in Catholic parishes,
where popular hymns likewise occupy an important
place, but in these there is discipline, and one feels
the power of a secular institution which may excite
fervor, but which can always keep it within rea-
sonable bounds. Here, on the contrary, everything
seemed to me disorganized, and even the expres-
sions used by these faithful enthusiasts were as new
to me as their exuberant manifestations. The
"Blood of Christ," particularly, of which they all
spoke insistently, resounded to my ear like words
of a strange language of which the sense escaped
me. Yet, there was in this assembly so much en-
thusiasm, and despite some trifles of doubtful taste,
everything breathed such evident sincerity and
inward peace, that I felt myself won over little by
little by the impression of a living faith which stood
out in the scene.

The "testimonies" above all, interested me great-
ly. One by one the people on the platform arose,
men, women, young people, all in turn made a sort
of public and personal confession, telling the atten-

68 THE UNKNOWN SANCTUARY

tive audience how they had become converted, not
i to a sect, they said, not to a religious creed, but to
Christ Himself, who had "saved" them. All of
them, in this recital of their own experiences sounded
the same note, that of deliverance and of peace.
'One had been freed from the fear of death, which
had oppressed him in the past, another from doubts
which had tortured his mind; a third, who had been
the plaything for long years of tyrannic passions,
declared himself morally liberated, and armed with
a power of resistance to evil which he had sought
in vain in the past in his good resolutions; others
finally, who had wandered through life without an
aim, without an ideal, affirmed that they had dis-
covered the "raison d'etre" of their being, and the
source of an inward and ever renewed joy.

All these testimonies were given in most homely
speech, and it was their very simplicity that made
them eloquent. Each one offered his individual
experience not as a result of adherence to a new
religion, but as the expression of the true Christian
life, the principle of which was to be sought within
the faith itself, and not in any ritualistic form
whatever. The idea that all, no matter what the
Church of their nativity might have been and with-
out their having to abandon it in order to embrace
another, might be able to attain the same spiritual

THE CALL OF SALVATION 69

end, gave to those tales of conversion a strange
significance and revealed to me an aspect of religion
that I had not perceived up to that time.

The scene that presented itself at the close of
this meeting was still more striking. The "officers"
began to address the audience in vibrant appeals,
imploring the sinners to return unto themselves,
to give themselves to Jesus, and to make open
confession of their will to change their way of life
by coming forward to the "seat of the penitents."
A number of persons responded to this pressing in-
vitation, and while the new converts knelt at the
foot of the platform they were immediately sur-
rounded by Salvationists who exhorted them, while
the faithful in uniforms scattered through the room
in search of other souls to win to Christ. As though
I feared to be in turn the object of these fervent
solicitations, I expressed the wish to my companion
to depart without waiting for the end of the meet-
ing, and I left the room in an entirely different state
of mind from that in which I had entered it.

I told my mother about the spectacle in which I
had had part, and persuaded her also, after much
hesitation, to go and become acquainted with the
Salvation Army. She came with me to a number
of meetings and our Protestant philosopher might
have triumphed at his leisure in seeing her follow

70 THE UNKNOWN SANCTUARY

the hymns with me, in the little pamphlet which we
had bought. Although she did not cease to make
reservations concerning the purity of the doctrine
preached in these assemblies, her spirit was too re-
ligious not to admire the accent of deep conviction
which obtained amongst these soldiers of the Gospel.

It was at these Salvation meetings, that it was
given to me to understand for the first time the
contagion that a perfect faith can communicate. The
incident is worth telling.

One day the room had been invaded by a
mob of students and of curiosity seekers, more
disposed to turn all things to ridicule than to listen
to the speeches and the testimonies. The hymns
followed one another, disturbed by howls and sneers,
and when the officer presiding over the meeting at-
tempted to speak, it was in vain that he asked for
silence. The interruptions tumultously drowned
his voice. A number of preachers, men and women,
tried in turn to make themselves heard by the over-
excited crowd; all their efforts were useless, and the
tumult in the room increased to such a pitch that it
seemed necessary to call in the police to reestablish
order. I will never forget the scene that followed.
Upon a signal from the president, an officer came
forward to the centre of the platform. She was
slight and pale and seemed the image of unarmed

THE CALL OF SALVATION 71

feebleness facing insolent brutality. At first sHe
did not speak, contenting herself with gazing at the
assembly, with a serenity that soon commanded
respect. Then she began to sing in a sweet sad
voice, and the tumult ceased little by little, and soon
the entire meeting hung upon her lips. That voice
seemed to have come from a world of purity and of
light, and offered the most striking contrast to the
coarseness of the audience. She sang:

Thy voice, O Jesus, is so sweet to my soul I
i would hearken to it forever

But the miracle was, that the song having ended,
she was able to deliver her message of penitence
and reconciliation, in a most perfect silence. The
crowd was conquered. An atmosphere of surprising
calm had settled over the room. This woman who
was speaking had, however, neither learning nor tal-
ent, and all her eloquence came solely from her
profound faith and from her ardent desire to com-
municate something of her convictions to her hear-
ers. But such an impression of spiritual power
radiated from her entire being that the most
frivolous were subdued.

These meetings of the Salvation Army added a
wholly new conception to my religious experiences.
By its very simplicity the Salvationist faith was a
striking contrast to the majestic Catholic edifice

72 THE UNKNOWN SANCTUARY

with its dogmas and its sacraments, and to Judaism
with its multitudinous practices into which Leon of
Modena had initiated me. The Salvationist faith
was impressive through its simplicity. It was not a
religion with changeless forms that I saw before me,
but a life that drew its inspiration from immediate
relation with the Eternal Power. It is true this life
rested on a perfectly definite doctrine, and taking it
all in all, of questionable basis, that of salvation
through faith in the value of the death of Jesus.
But the nature of this faith tempered the rigor of its
form, it spelled renunciation of one's own will, the
giving of one's heart and utter trust.

For an instant I believed I had found the supreme
truth which constituted the fundamental idea of
primitive Christianity, as it was preached in the
fields of Galilee. Later, I realized that the idea of
finding in these humble beginnings of Christian
preaching a solid theological basis, completely falsi-
fies the perspective of history. But aside from the
doctrinal teachings, I have no doubt that I then
grasped the essential element of the religious life.

And that which confers real value on this phase
of my experience, despite its narrowness, and its
errors, was that my spiritual growth reached at that
moment the decisive point, when the soul passes,
from the beliefs taugh'i and passively accepted, to

THE CALL OF SALVATION 73

personal religious convictions. A few weeks before
I had flattered myself that I could convert Father
Staehlin to Catholicism; in reality it was he who had
converted me to Protestantism.

If one brushes aside opinions and less important
doctrines, it is certainly in the individual conception
of religion that the Protestant principle lies.

The impressions that I received at that time were
so profound, that one day I found myself among
the number of the converted, for whom the Salva-
tionists gave thanks to heaven at each meeting.
One evening in the absence of my mother, when the
call to the sinners had resounded, I was among the
number of those who approached the seat of the
penitents. As in other acts of my religious life, it
would be difficult for me to explain exactly what
inner impulse I was obeying at that moment, but I
know that I acted with all the seriousness and with
all the piety of which I was capable. Salvationists
surrounded me immediately to pray with me and to
offer me their counsels. What did they say to me?
I have no recollection of it whatever, but I had the
feeling that I had taken a step of greatest moment.
On returning home I told my mother what had
happened. I told her that I felt an entirely new
happiness, that I understood better than ever before
the duty to serve God and the privilege of beinp able

74 THE UNKNOWN SANCTUARY

to do so, with a mind liberated from all unquiet-
ness, and that in a word I had laid hold on the deep
truth of the Christian religion. She saw how sincere
I was, and did not reproach me but replied as she
kissed me, that nothing could make her happier
than to see her son take religion seriously, conjuring
me, however, not to forget my Catholicism and to
remain faithful to the promises I had made to it.

If Father Henri had happened in at that moment
he certainly would have spoken to me in a different
key, but, by a singular conjunction of circumstances,
as though Providence had willed to leave the field
free for the study of this new aspect of Christianity
which had been revealed to me, it happened that
my Dominican was obliged to leave Lyons for
Poitiers, so that I found myself without a father-
confessor. It was to M. Lemann that I turned
anew for the Easter confession which followed upon
my Salvationist conversion, but I took good care
not to let him learn what had happened to me,
knowing that he would not be able to understand.
I limited myself to asking him one day, in passing,
what he thought of the Salvation Army and I re-
member well, the reply he made to me: "They are,"
said he, "the false prophets to whom one can apply
the word of Zachariah: 'Thou shalt not live, for
thou speakest lies in the name of the Lord.' "

THE CALL OF SALVATION 7 5

But I myself at that time was of the number of
those "prophets of falsehood", for the Salvationists,
making use of my good will, had not failed to enroll
me in their ranks. I wore their uniform to the
meetings and joined the brigades, which on Sunday
went out to sell the paper "Onward 1" On these
occasions we reaped many insults and very few
encouragements, but we were light of heart, filled
with the sweet illusion of doing something useful
for the salvation of the world. The thought of suf-
fering for the Lord helped us to bear joyously the
coarse jests with which the appearance of the Salva-
tion military-caps were greeted at that time, and
even now I think with a certain tenderness of that
period of my youth, for a thing is dear to us when
we have put much of ourselves into it, and a blessing
is attached to every act of renunciation performed
for the love of our fellowmen.

Nevertheless it is the great weakness of the Salva-
tion Army that in order to keep those it wins to its
doctrines, it is deprived of the resources which an
organized church possesses. Founded on the rin-
ciple of Anglo-Saxon revivals, by the most im-
pressive means trying to produce conversions
through vigorously inculcating the consciousness of
sin, and the faith in a regenerating Power which can
deliver us from it, it is incapable of maintaining

76 THE UNKNOWN SANCTUARY

and developing the spiritual life among its adherents,
though it caused the first seed to germinate within
them. It is a fact that the majority of its converts
go over to swell the ranks of other Christian com-
munions. Its aim is essentially to wrest the sinner
from the yoke of his passions, or from the culpable
indifference regarding religion in which he lives,
and then to make of him an instrument of salvation
for others. It only retains within its ranks those
converts whom it can finally turn into missionaries
of salvation.

It follows then that it seeks to lead in that path
those whose conversion seems to present serious
guarantees of permanence. The "seat of the peni-
tents" which they used as a spring-board to a new
life is presented to them as the providential prep-
aration for the "military school" where the future
officers are trained, and they did not delay action
in my case. The day came when the obligation to
give to others what I had received, and to consecrate
myself to the service of God in the Salvation Army
was put before my conscience. In order to under-
stand what came to pass, one must not lose sight
of the fact that this exhortation was addressed to a
young man, who early in life had dreamed of be-
coming a priest, and who had not orientated himself
in the world outside of the religious life.

THE CALL OF SALVATION 77

My readers will no doubt think we are far from
our point of departure, I mean from that evening
of the "Neila" where for the first time I saw Israel
religiously alive. And yet, Hebrew had remained
just as dear to me. M. Augustin Lemann had the
habit or saying in jest, that in order to know it well
one must forget it seven times, and take it up again
seven times. But far from making use of this
pleasantry in order to neglect my study, I made a
rule for myself to consecrate some moments to it
each day, and I continued to add a Hebrew psalm
and some fragments of the ritual to my daily pray-
ers.

A point of contact had established itself in
my thoughts between my first visit to the syna-
gogue and my unexpected meeting with the Salva-
tion Army the two experiences happened at an
interval of three years, almost at the same date
and at the time that I publicly took my place among
the converted Salvationists, I really found myself
less distant from Judaism than one would be led to
imagine, in considering only the facts themselves.
This will be made clear in the continuation of my
narrative.

yin

THE WORD OF THE GOSPEL

WHAT would have happened had I never known
Christianity in any but the unique form of the
religion of my birth? And even though Catholicism
may justly be considered the most perfect in form,
if later because of my distress over deviations,
pagan hi origin, by the side of purely Jew:, ele-
ments which it preserved and developed, I embraced
Judaism, it might with some show of reason be said,
that my estrangement from Christianity was due to
ignorance of its basic principles, of its essential
ideas. In fact, interesting as the Catholic Church
may be, it now only represents one-half of Christian-
ity, and in Protestant communities Christianity con-
tinues to exist on principles which are not exactly
those of Rome. A serious study of Christian
doctrines must not overlook the conceptions of
the faiths of the dissenters, and it was this study
which my contact with the Salvation Army helped
me to make in a more informing and complete
fashion than I could have done through anv amount
of reading. In Catholicism the principle of ec-

78

THE WORD OP THE GOSPEL 79

clesiastical authority regulates the entire religious
life of its followers, and tempers by its modifications
and interpretations the letter of the Gospel, where
it is too absolute or often incompatible with the
needs of a human society that desires to live and to
endure. Protestantism on the contrary acknowl-
edges no other rule than the gospel word itself, and
is obliged to extract therefrom its constituent prin-
ciples, and to subordinate to them the entire
Christian life; also, to conclude from its premises
what the final development of Christianity is to be.
In fact, the majority of creeds which claim to de-
rive from the Reformation of the XVIth Century,
do not conform to this fundamental principle, and
do not succeed in entirely eliminating the ecclesias-
tical element, because of the need of adaptation and
the play of historic laws which are stronger than
logic itself. It is quite evident on the whole that
the personality of Jesus who is the centre, the soul
of the Christian faith, cannot be rediscovered, ex-
cept through tradition, that is to say through the
Church. Thus it is that despite all things and by
an inevitable inconsistency, Protestantism has not
been able to separate Jesus wholly from his historic
background, and thus it still keeps in step with the
organized Church instead of relinquishing its follow-
ers to the direct and personal influence of the sav-

80 THE UNKNOWN SANCTUARY

ing Messiah. It could only continue to exist as a
religion, because it retained doctrinal teachings and
common practices which form the necessary out-
ward bond of an organization.

It can then readily be conceived how great an
interest the study of the Protestant principle pre-
sented to a Christian soul which tended toward the
pure origins of its faith, and by a happy conjunc-
tion of circumstances I found myself in close rela-
tion with one of the most logical forms, and at the
same time the most vital, of Protestantism, most
liberated in any case from ecclesiastical organization,
from theological teachings and from sacramental
cults. Here the Christian soul found itself in the
presence of the object of its faith, through sup-
pression of all intermediaries. From this point of
view the Salvation Army is certainly more Protest-
ant than any Church of the Reformation. William
Booth, its founder, a man of remarkable intelligence,
has denied having intended to create a new sect.
He has also taken good care not to impose any spe-
cial belief on his followers, nor any sacrament, nor
particular ceremony; baptism and even communion
play no role in the religious life of his army. The
work which he created, finding itself thus freed
from every set form and from all dogmatism, could
become the meeting ground of Christians or diverse

THE WORD OF THE GOSPEL 81

churches united in a common effort toward religious
and social regeneration. This conception had some-
thing alluring for a Catholic such as I was, who was
not asked to abandon his religious preferences, and
also explains why the very pious soul of my mother
could without disquiet, possibly even with a cer-
tain satisfaction, see me absorbed by a happy zeal
for the Salvation Army at the moment when she had
feared the occult and otherwise dangerous influence
of Judaism upon me.

In truth, in the broad Salvation principle which
permits the gatherings of all Christians of every
denomination, there is a lure, introduced in good
faith no doubt, but which regains, as in every other
case, that spirit of sect, the exclusion of which has
been formally declared. The fundamental idea of
Protestantism, individualism, only germinates there
to blossom in an essential dogma. The soul, they
say, comes into the immediate presence of Jesus,
but how can this Jesus be known who cannot be
seen, nor touched, and who no longer is, as in the
church, a living force, acting through the medium
of the hierarchy and the sacraments? Through the
dogma which all the Protestant innovators since
Luther have made the basis of their reform; the
justification through faith in the efficacy of the suf-
fering and the death of Christ, mystically substituted

82 THE UNKNOWN SANCTUARY

for the sinner. The justification operates more ef-
fectively as faith in this doctrine becomes more vital,
and thus individualism results in enlightenment,
which has always been in Protestant countries at
the heart of religious awakenings.

The justified soul, or, to employ the Salvation
language, the soul saved from the damnation with
which the Gospel threatens the sinners and even the
unbelievers, for it says in clear tones, "he that be-
lieveth not is condemned," that soul in truth cannot
live and be sanctified except through absolute obedi-
ence to the precepts of Jesus, its sovereign master.
It may come to pass, it is even in the order of normal
things, that this or that gospel word take on under
the domination of this doctrine, so absolute and
imperative a character that the possibility of remain-
ing saved depends on absolute submission thereto. I
shall never forget the day on which the Gospel
was presented in this solemn way to my conscience.
I had accompanied a superior officer passing through
Lyons on a visit to a poor family of working people.
Her burning zeal, her radiant mysticism, her com-
plete detachment from the things of this world,
preached more eloquently than her words. On her
knees in an humble cottage, the Salvationist prayed
aloud with rapturous fervor for the conversion of
the family, which remained deaf to all entreaties, In

THE WORD OF THE GOSPEL 83

going away still animated by the zeal of her apostle-
ship, she said to me: "See how souls are lostl Why
do you hesitate to fly to their help? Yours is the
duty; for this Christ has summoned you. Your
place is in the Military School of the Salvation
Army."

I replied that this was impossible, for my mother
had only me in the world, and I could not think
for a moment of separating myself from her in
order to lead the life of a Salvation missionary.

The officer looked me squarely in the face and
continued: "Jesus said, 'He that loveth father or
mother more than me is not worthy of me, if any
man come to me and hate not his father or mother
and wife or children and brethren and sisters he
cannot be my disciple. And whosoever doth not
bear his cross and come after me cannot be my
disciple. No man having put his hand to the plough
and looking back is fit for the kingdom of God.' "

These words entered my soul like an arrow and
destroyed in an instant all the peace that for
some time had been my portion. Thus it inevitably
happens when the soul is given over to its own in-
spiration without curb or discipline and without the
salutary control of a sure tradition, of a wise direc-
tion. This simple citation of the Gospel assumed
supreme importance in my eyes and the very ex-

84 THE UNKNOWN SANCTUARY

istence of my soul seemed to hang on the interpre-
tation I was to give to it.

For many days I tried to wrestle with this prob-
lem, and the religious happiness I had tasted up to
this time had come to an end. No more fervent
prayers, no more calming and luminous certitude!
Doubt had entered my soul and given rise to an un-
conquerable aridity and disgust. All divine realities
were henceforth for me in the word that I had
heard, and it seemed to me that in trying to escape
its authority, I was revolting against God himself
and closing against myself the doors of salvation
forever. Reading the Gospel only increased my
inward distress, for all its teachings became void
before those verses to which the officer had given
so direct and incisive a meaning: "Whosoever would
save his life shall lose it, but whosoever would lose
it for my sake and the Gospel shall save it." Had
there only been some special idea of the Salvation
Army in question, foreign to the essence of the
Gospel, it would not have been able even under the
domination of a passing exaltation, thus to shake
my moral balance. In order to produce this state
of mind in me such an idea to the contrary would
have had to draw its strength from primitive
Christianity. And this is so in all the Christian
denominations. The Catholic cloisters, the mis-

THE WORD OF THE GOSPEL 85

sionary homes, lost among pagan populations often
most hostile, are filled with souls who once heard
the irresistible call of the Master, bidding them to
leave all and to follow him. And it was not without
impunity that when merely a child I had read
through the annals of Catholic Missions, initiating
myself thus in this conception of the Kingdom of
God, to which one cannot have access except through
absolute renunciation.

Having decided to do everything I could possibly
do to regain my lost peace, I communicated to my
mother the feelings which agitated me, and I added
that the desire I had formerly felt to become a
priest, could be realized more simply and more im-
mediately, in giving my complete consecration to the
Salvation Army. It can^easily be imagined that my
mother did not accept these suggestions of mine
without strong protestations. Nevertheless, the pain
she manifested was nothing like the despair which
I witnessed some months before, at the time of her
discovery of the Tefillin. Her chief objection was
that God apportions one's duties according to one's
physical strength, and that my state of health did
not permit me to undertake the adventurous life
bound up with all the privations of the missionary
Salvationist. She had our physician explain this to
me more categorically; he, informed by her of my

86 THE UNKNOWN SANCTUARY

plans, painted for me in sombrest colors the dan-
gers to which I would expose myself. But in the
religious mood in which I then was, what weight
could a medical inhibition have in comparison with
a Gospel commandment? My need of Christian
immolation was only fortified thereby.

I explained to my mother that our priests, our
religious men and women often found themselves
faced by the same moral obligations, and must sacri-
fice their dearest affections to God. She was con-
vinced of this, but replied that their lives could not
be compared to those of the Salvationist officers,
laudable without doubt, but imperfect, as is all
spiritual activity dispensed outside of the true
Church. Abbe Neyret, consulted by her, did not
hesitate to tell her that she had been gravely im-
prudent in authorizing my frequenting the Salva-
tion Army meetings, that I could not go any further
without falling into formal and damnable heresy.
In order to take me away from a dangerous environ-
ment, he suggested a few days of retreat at La
Grande Chartreuse. This plan was attractive to me.
It was the first journey I had taken alone, and I felt
that in consecrating myself in entire isolation during
a week to prayer and meditation I would be accom-
plishing something which would be of importance
to me.

THE WORD OF THE GOSPEL 87

I may have regretted many of my thoughtless
acts because of what followed, but it is with a
quiet heart that I think of the confidence which
caused me to look forward at that time to a solemn
tete-a-tete with God ; the light of which I had need.

IX
AT LA GRANDE CHARTREUSE

I MADE the journey from Voiron to La Grande
Chartreuse on foot, This sudden plunge into the
splendor of nature enchanted me, and I did not
weary of admiring the beauty of the magnificent
landscape which I beheld for the first time. In the
middle of the road, I sat down beneath the trees,
and taking out my Hebrew psalter read several
pages aloud. It seemed to me that the old songs of
Israel harmonized with the pure mountain air, the
roaring of the torrent in the valley and the lovely
light which reached me from the sky, filtering
through the sombre foliage. "0 Lord, how manifold
are thy works 1 In wisdom hast thou made them all."
Without knowing it I then communed, above all
human differences, with eternal religion in the un-
derstanding of those most essential verities, not
many to be sure, which alone give life to the soul.

Arrived at the monastery, I was assigned as resi-
dence, as are all travelers desiring to spend the
night there, to a cold bare cell, with a couch built
into the wall like a coffin in its funeral niche, and I

AT LA GRANDE CHARTREUSE 89

went down to the common refectory for the eve-
ning meal.

My neighbors at the table were Italian priests,
who seemed to me to bring to this cloister the in-
souciance of joyous tourists rather than the serious
contemplation in keeping with those in retreat.
"Ci vorrebe un poco di musical" said they. Music,
my God! when we came to this place to seek the
great silence, inspirer of high and noble thoughts.
I did not enter into conversation with these jocose
persons, and retired promptly to say my prayers in
my little cell. On the prie-dieu lay a book, but this
manual of spiritual exercises gave me the same
impression of mediocrity as did the devotional
practices once recommended by the good Abbe
Lemann. I closed the book to take up my psalter,
from which I had so often before drawn pure re-
ligious inspiration. "Why art thou cast down, O
my soul? And why art thou disquieted within
me? Hope thou in God: for I shall yet praise Him,
who is the health of my countenance and my God."
God who reveals himself in nature as the mysterious
and eternal power of life is also the source of light
and of solace for the unquiet soul, and I was sure
that he would cause me to feel His presence, and
that during this retreat I might find a solution in
conformity with His will.

90 THE UNKNOWN SANCTUARY

In the night the brother who kept watch came to
knock at my door a few minutes before the hour for
Matins, and I went to the gallery open to strangers
to join in the monastery services. In the shadow of
the choir, all perfumed with incense, where the
perpetual light threw its solitary wavering gleam,
the monks, one by one, took their places, their little
lamps lighting up for moments their white
silhouettes, then hiding themselves and leaving the
chapel plunged in almost total darkness. The
voices rose slowly and solemnly, rolling out in
austere fashion the prayer of the liturgy of Saint
Bruno. They were clothed in the Latin language,
those same accents of confidence and of hope that
the Hebrew psalms have given to our world of
doubt and suffering. After the meagre exhorta-
tions of the little manual, placed at the disposal of
those in retreat, the Church offered an astonishing
contrast of banality and of sublime grandeur like
humanity itself; it prayed with ancient Israel in
the majestic rhythm of the three nocturnes, with
their lessons, their responses, their short intervals of
silence, which threw into an almost unreal distance
the memory of the burning Salvationist chants in
which my voice had part the night before. In that
hour I felt I was a son of the great and ancient

AT LA GRANDE CHARTREUSE 91

Church, and I was prepared with docility to accept
its commands.

The next morning, after high mass, I had myself
inscribed as one in retreat and the father confessor
was assigned to me, to whom I was to address
myself. I saw him for the first time in the after-
noon of that day. He was an ascetic, very digni-
fied and distant in manner, who had none of the
penetrating grace of Father Henri. He limited
himself to prescribing the religious exercises prepar-
atory to my general confession, and I devoted
myself to this during the two following days
with scrupulous attention, taking part regularly in
the chapel services of the day and evening, my
only interruption being an hour's walk in the .vast
forest which surrounds the monastery.

The confession which I was to make would be
a detailed account, and as exact as possible, of my
life and the diverse religious phases through which
I had passed up to the day when the agonizing ques-
tion came before my conscience which was the de-
termining motive of this retreat at La Chartreuse. I
expected positive help for my soul from these con-
fidences made to a minister of God, trained in the
solitude of the cloister, far from all earthly cares.
I was humble and confident as befits the true pen-
itent, and a little disturbed only by the gravity of

92 THE UNKNOWN SANCTUARY

the act to be carried out, and the perspective of the
important consequences which must follow. The
moment having come, on my knees before the monk,
I began my detailed recital, and I might have con-
tinued it and finished it without any question what-
ever coming from the confessor, as is customary, to
facilitate my task. Finally embarrassed by his si-
lence, which seemed heavy with grave admoni-
tions, I looked at the monk and perceived his calm
and scrutinizing eyes fixed upon me. They be-
trayed neither surprise nor reproach. No particu-
lar feeling was expressed by this countenance con-
gealed in the immobility of detachment from all
things, but I felt with sudden acuteness, I felt
there was no soul there bending over my own to
give salutary counsel, but a cold lucid intelligence,
which was judging me by rules of ordinary com-
mon sense, and that would not discover in all my
history, aught but a succession of disconcerting con-
tradictions and incoherent religious vacillations.

I am quite aware that even today many of my
readers will find it difficult to follow me; they can no
doubt with difficulty lay hold upon the thread -hat
guides the events of my life. How then could this
monk of La Chartreuse discover beneath the strange
events of my confession the true warp and woof of
the inner drama that I was unfolding to him? To

AT LA GRANDE CHARTREUSE 93

do that he would have had to be able to rise above
distinctive dogmas and ecclesiastical divisions, to
the pure region of absolute religion, that my soul,
more Catholic, in a sense, than his own, already per-
ceived. For he was the representative of a rigid
system, sublimated by the discipline of the cloister,
which did not permit him to admit, nor even to con-
ceive of any possible reconciliation with what to him
seemed error.

The impression made upon me by the Synagogue
and the Judaism of Leon of Modena, my ideas con-
cerning the Catholic priesthood, my relations to the
Salvation Army, and the thought of taking my
place among its missionaries, all this seemed so in-
explicable, to him, that he no doubt found therein
the indication of an unbalanced mind. He arose
and said to me: "You came to seek counsel, I give
it to you. You are not in the proper frame of mind
to gain anything by remaining in retreat in this
house." And then, as if he feared that my prolonged
presence in the monastery might cause trouble, he
added: "There is a train to Grenoble presently,
leave without delay, that is the best course for you
to pursue."

Thus the monk sent me away, and I cannot for
a moment think of blaming him for the lack of un-
derstanding which he manifested toward an utterly

94 THE UNKNOWN SANCTUARY

sincere young penitent who had laid bare his soul
to him. During some moments he had me morally
in his power, he could have done with me as he
would, and at that time have definitely led me back
to the seminary. He did nothing, because cold
reason in him left no place for the understanding
heart. Indeed he did exactly the reverse of that
which those who sent me to him might have ex-
pected of him. He flung me back to the influence
of the solemn warning given me by the Salvationist
officer: "If any man come to me and hate not his
father, and mother, and wife, and children, and
brethren, and sisters, ... he cannot be my disciple."

Since the church of my birth that I had come to
consult with wholly filial submission, had no new in-
terpretation of the word of the Gospel to give me, I
would obey my first impulse. The light that I
sought to guide me in my incertitude had been
granted me by the very silence of the monk.
Despite the latter's recommendation, I prolonged
my sojourn by several hours at La Chartreuse. I
departed on the following morning, resolved to sign
my request for admittance to the military school
of the Salvation Army.

Upon my return to Lyons my mother heard my
decision with as much surprise as sorrow, unable to
understand how the retreat at La Chartreuse had

AT LA GRANDE CHARTREUSE 95

produced a result so unlocked for in me. I was
not of age. She might, using her authority, have
opposed the carrying out of my plans. She did
nothing of the kind, and I revere the wisdom of
her conduct. In the apparent calm with which she
occupied herself in the preparations for my depar-
ture, although her heart was torn, as was mine, at the
thought of the coming separation, there was per-
haps the implicit certainty, that this new experience
would be of short duration and would finally tend
toward the good of my soul. She was not mis-
taken.

X

CHRIST WITHOUT A CHURCH

I LEFT for Paris with several officers and future
pupils, and installed in the School of the Quai
Valmy, found myself thrown into an unquiet ex-
istence which in no way resembled the preparation
for the missionary life of which I had dreamed.
What a striking contrast to the calm of the isolated
cloister in the depths of the forest this religious
fever, these burning prayers, these disordered songs
in the midst of which I was flung in the tumult of
Paris. Small domestic tasks were assigned to me,
which would have seemed repulsive had it not been
for my Catholic discipline, which helped me to
accept the most humble duties. Nevertheless, in
order to keep up my courage and to compensate
myself for the pain I felt at being separated from
my mother, under conditions that were a cause of
deep distress to her, I was in need of a completely
spiritual life, furthered by a wise understanding
that might fortify my mood. But in the Salva-
tionist environment, all this was lacking.
Outside the frame-work of the meeting to which

96

CHRIST WITHOUT A CHURCH 97

I was accustomed, the improvised prayers seemed
to me hasty and conventional. The speeches of the
leaders to the student-officers usually showed noth-
ing more than a factitious exaltation, poorly dis-
guising complete ignorance regarding religious mat-
ters, and a sort of contempt for all intellectual as
well as theological culture. Above all, I was
amazed to see that no pains were taken to avoid
indication that all Christian Churches were blame-
worthy, all their ceremonies vain shows, and that
the Salvation Army alone possessed the pure Gospel
and could alone effectively work for the salvation of
the world. I soon experienced a painful sense of
being out of place, and asked myself if my ideal of
consecration to the service of God, without the re-
striction of a denomination, did not rest on an illu
sion in this environment.

It was during these days at the Military School
that I found myself face to face with the Protestant
principle and I very soon discovered its inconsis-
tencies. If God, in order to redeem sinful human-
ity, was obliged to incarnate himself in the person of
Jesus, is it thinkable that his short stay on this
earth could only culminate in the formation of an
invisible company, of an altogether ideal church,
without body and without social organization? The
condition of the world having need of the work of

98 THE UNKNOWN SANCTUARY

salvation for the great event of Redemption, can
one conceive that God would have taken no pre-
caution to preserve the doctrine which was to prove
its value, and that he would undeliberately have
turned it over to the countless contradictions of
rival sects? All the dissenting faiths agree on one
point, the only one on which there is unanimity
amongst them; it is condemnation of the Church of
Rome, as constituting a development of Christian-
ity contrary to its pure essence. But does not this
point of view at the same time establish the illogical
character of a doctrine which proclaims as divine a
revelation vitiated in its very germ, since the his-
toric evolution of this germ, hierarchic, dogmatic,
cultural would culminate in a mass of errors?
Would it not be more reasonable to think that the
source of error must be sought higher up, to know
in fact that this revelation was opposed to another
revelation, more ancient, and yet recognized with
singular irrelevancy as its first, its indispensable
foundation?

Another doubt arose in my mind as to what
exactly was the unique pivotal point of all the Sal-
vationist activities. It happened that at a meeting
of pupil-officers, Commissioner Clibborn took as
her text one day this verse of the Gospel: "Where
two or three are gathered together in my name,

CHRIST WITHOUT A CHURCH 99

there am I in the midst of them." She spoke to us
with rare power of the presence of Jesus, of which
Christians in general, she said, did not feel all the
divine reality. Nevertheless, he is here at this
very moment, this Jesus who preached to the crowd
of Galilee. Those eyes so gentle, that penetrated to
the depth of the souls of the fishermen, are fixed
upon us. That heart which so loved men, is ever
aflame with love for us; those hands which rested
in blessing on the heads of little children, are out-
stretched towards us; those feet that were nailed
to the wood of Calvary have come to meet us. And
as in the past he received the adoration of the blind,
he expects that we in turn shall worship him with
the same faith." Throwing herself on her knees,
with these words, she addressed to Jesus, present
though invisible, the most fervent prayer. I had very
often heard all these thoughts expressed, I had
many times joined in similar prayers, and yet on
this particular day I was struck by the strangeness
of these ideas. How could this Jesus of Nazareth,
whose historic figure was thus invoked in gripping
fashion, be everywhere at the same time? The
Catholic Church does not believe in the real pres-
ence except in the sacrament at the altar. The mys-
tery thus develops itself in a material symbol, and it

100 THE UNKNOWN SANCTUARY

is only as the second hypostasis of the divine Trinity
that the Son of God is adored, present everywhere.

But how explain this supposed omnipresence of
the person of Jesus, materialized by the Protestant
faith? Was I not the dupe of a word, of a formula?
And this word, this formula, did they conceal some-
thing of reality? It was nevertheless only the cer-
tainty of this reality which could justify obedience
to words spoken two thousand years ago, and which
without it are no more than an empty echo without
any legitimate authority over our consciences. "He
who loves his father or his mother more than me
is not worthy of me." By what right exact such
sacrifices, such reversal of the holiest sentiments of
nature, when one has disappeared, a fugitive
image, lost in the mists of a far-distant past, and
resuscitated only in the imagination of naive wor-
shippers? From that time my uneasiness at each
meeting grew stronger, and it became evident to me
that I was not in harmony with the beliefs professed
all about me.

Again it was my Hebrew psalter that fortified me
in this increasing perplexity. Therein I discovered
words attesting the belief in a divine presence,
which had not waited for the coming of Jesus to
manifest itself. "Whom have I in heaven but
Thee? And there is none upon earth that I desire

CHRIST WITHOUT A CHURCH 101

besides Thee. My flesh and my heart faileth; but
God is the strength of my heart and my portion
forever." Was not this the faith of Jesus, and why
should it not still be our faith today? A chance
circumstance helped to enlighten me on my religious
status, and it was again from the Church of my
birth that the decisive impression came. On a cer-
tain Sunday in June, with a group of Salvationists, I
passed by the Church of the Madeleine, its fagade
decorated, with hangings on the outer doors for
the Fete-Dleu. The crowd pressed against the
edges of the building, and without stopping, we has-
tened our steps towards I know not which meeting
of the Faubourg. At that moment I had the very
definite sensation that I was no longer with the be-
lieving crowd, that I belonged to a small sect, and
my Catholic instinct revolted. That very evening
I announced to the leaders that I had come to them
in good faith, but had reached the conviction that I
was not in the place destined for me by God. No
effort was made to detain me, and one of the su-
perior officers limited himself to declaring with an
air of pity, that from the first he had had doubts as
to my vocation. The following day I telegraphed
to my mother to announce my return, happy in the
joy that this news would bring to her. My retreat
at La Grande Chartreuse only lasted four days, but

102 THE UNKNOWN SANCTUARY

nonetheless it marked an important step in my
religious development. The weeks passed at the
Military School of the Salvation Army at Paris were
also but a swiftly passing episode in my life as a
youth, but such notable changes were taking place
within me, that this story would be incomplete if I
had not made a place for them in my telling of it.

XI

THE DOMINICAN CHAPEL

ONE can readily imagine in what a state of mind
I returned to Lyons after this swift and exciting
adventure. I was like a man who had just escaped
from a great peril, and who therefore appreciates
more fully the charm of life. Never did the pres-
ence of my dear mother seem more sweet to me;
never did I feel happier in our modest dwelling, so
serene and filled with the most precious joys of
this world. Our days passed like a river of pure
waters, flowing without break between its banks.
In our home, religion had the place of honor, but
without any affectation. It was neither somber nor
spasmodic, and thus very different from the feverish
piety of the Salvationists whom I had seen osten-
tatiously kneeling and loudly praying on the side-
walk of the Lyons station. It is quite comprehen-
sible that on the day following these experiences I
had the feeling of restored balance and that the
Church of my birth, with its majestic secular tradi-
tions, with the intelligent regulations of its religious
life, so perfectly adapted to various degrees of

103

104 THE UNKNOWN SANCTUARY

spiritual culture, had regained at one stroke all its
prestige in my sight.

The Abb6 Neyret, eager to oppose the breadth of
Catholic discipline to the tyrannical demands of
Protestant illuminism, thought it wise to demand of
me only what was absolutely necessary in matters of
religious practices. He said to my mother, that
providing I be faithful to the Sunday mass, I could
be exempted from everything else. But the vesper
service which we habitually attended in our Prima-
tial church was precisely what I cared most about,
because the singing of the psalms had a special at-
traction for me. The plain chant was rendered
with such perfection in the Lyons Cathedral, the
liturgy unrolled itself there in so impressive a man-
ner that I took utmost pleasure in these Sunday
afternoon services. When in the quiet of the vast
aisles, the pure voices of children in crystalline
notes sang the last responses of the Complines, the
In manus tuas, Domine, the words reechoed in my
soul with such power and such serenity that I was
astonished myself that I could have sung the praises
of God to the sound of tambourines and cymbals,
in incoherent and noisy meetings, and I once again
found the atmosphere of peace in which my early
youth had developed.
I can only speak with respect and with affection

THE DOMINICAN CHAPEL 105

of the Church of my birth. God keep me from
forgetting what was my initiation into the religious
life, and that it formed the beautiful soul of my
mother, whose lofty piety spread the most blessed
influence Over my entire existence. I know of
nothing more painful than the acridity with which
certain Catholics who have become Protestants, ex-
press themselves on the subject of the Roman
Church. To hear them one would say that their
present worth can only be built upon their former
worthlessness, and they know not how to affirm
their Evangelical orthodoxy without making a show
of ingratitude. There is undeniable injustice and
consequently a false principle in such arrogance. In
reality, they only oppose one government against
another, and one might say that they set their wits
to work to prove that the new is as false as the old,
without having its august and logical ordinances.
The truth in human institutions, and all religious
societies are in large measure human, knows not
these clear-cut categories; it is always relative and
conditional. As to myself, I was indeed in a posi-
tion to judge the imperfections and the weaknesses
of the Catholic system, but this did not blind me
to its beauty and its grandeur.

How could I fail to mention in this connection
that the master, whose acquaintance I was to make

106 THE UNKNOWN SANCTUARY

some months later, and who was to play a decisive
role in my religious evolution, often repeated to me,
that, in his opinion, Christianity, and particularly
the great Latin Church, which he knew better than
any other, corrected and reformed in certain essen-
tial points, and taken back to its primitivei sources,
would be likely to remain the religion of the Gentile
people? I would that my Catholic brothers who
read these lines may know that the deference and
recognition that they witness on my part are in
reality homage to Judaism, which through the life of
one of its most illustrious rabbis was inculcated
within me. May they then rid themselves of their
prejudices and recognize the true spirit with which
the ancient synagogue of Israel is animated in re-
gard to the great educative religions of humanity.

I am moreover more at ease in speaking thus of
Catholicism, to which my Salvation Army digression
had sent me back, now that I have come to the
solemn hour which marked my definite conversion;
and it was in the bosom of the Catholic Church that
this hour struck for me.

I hesitated a long time before writing the follow-
ing pages, for I am conscious of my inability to
make clear to my readers the intimate sequences
which made precious truths stand out clearly before
my own eyes. There are regions of the soul where

THE DOMINICAN CHAPEL 107

mysterious powers enter into play, and nothing is
more difficult than to make this clear to those who
have never experienced anything of the kind. My
duty, however, is to continue this recital with sin-
cerity, omitting nothing that is essential, since the
aim I have set myself in writing, is not to satisfy a
vain curiosity. My wish is to come to the aid of
those souls taken captive by truth, and bring to
them my own witness, if God will to aid my im-
perfections.

Catholic discipline does not permit any one of its
followers to remain in vacuo concerning his be-
liefs, or his moral life. The edification th?* I found
in the solemn services of our cathedral did not prove
to the Church that I was one of its submissive sons.
The day must necessarily come on which I was to
take the sacraments. Since my return to Paris
Abbe Neyret as well as my mother had observed the
most prudent reserve in this regard. But months
passed by, and Lent having come to a close, the
rigorous duty of the Easter communion made it
impossible to delay any longer.

It was just at this time, and by another providen-
tial coincidence, that Father Henri returned from
Poitiers, and an affectionate letter from him an-
nounced to me one day that he had come back to
the Monastery of la rue Bugeaud. I hastened to go

108 THE UNKNOWN SANCTUARY

to him, and he received me with his usual kindness,
interesting himself keenly in everything I told him
of my religious wanderings, which had occurred
during his absence. "My dear child/' he said to
me, "it is impossible not to see the hand of God in
everything that has happened to you. This it is
that has led you, step by step, to this day. God has
certain plans for you which are manifest in the
working out of all these events, and you must
respond to such grace, by a great surrender of your
heart and by a firm will to serve God, even if you
are called to remain of the world, of which I am not

sure."

Thus he spoke to me, and I was struck by the
allusion to the possibility of a religious vocation.
His words expressed, in any case, a truth become
more evident to me each day. "There is not a man,"
said Bourdaloue, "who reviews the years of his life,
and who recalls the memories of all that has hap-
pened to him, but must pause at certain periods.
These are the junctures where he found himself in
perils from which he escaped, events happy or un-
happy, strangely, extraordinarily astonishing, and
which are so many signs of a visible Providence."
These visible signs of a higher will came to me
throughout my life without the shadow of a doubt,
and my most ardent desire is to be able to bring

THE DOMINICAN CHAPEL 109

home to others this fact, to move them at least to
seek in their own lives those signs of a higher power
which they will unmistakably find there.

It was in the course of my conversations with the
Dominican Father that, in the simplest and at the
same time in the most helpful way, my general con-
fession was made, which was laboriously prepared
at La Chartreuse, and which, contrary to all ex-
pectations, had so disconcerting a result. Possibly
my adherence to the Salvation Army made mine a
case reserved for the penitentiary priest and my
father-confessor was obliged to ask for special au-
thority in order to save me from excommunication.
At any rate, my communion was put off until after
the Easter period. I prepared myself for it with as
much care and conscientiousness as though it were
the first time that I was to accomplish this act. At
last the day came and I shall not forget it in all my
life.

It was on a Sunday of spring. On that morning
I went to the Dominican Chapel. It was not open
to the public at that time, and I found myself quite
alone with the server in the right aisle, a few steps
from the altar, where Father Henri was officiating
with the unction which he put into all his religious
offices. I was on my knees, without any book what-
ever, desiring to be in unison with the rites and

110 THE UNKNOWN SANCTUARY

prayers. As the moment of communion ap-
proached, I tried to redouble my fervor, and the
moment having come, I went to kneel to receive the
sacrament on the very steps of the altar, after which
I returned to my place, and my head bowed in my
hands lost myself in deepest thanksgiving prayers.

And then I became irresistibly impelled to
analyze my thoughts, my feelings. Forces had been
at work within me, during the preceding years, in
large part without my being conscious of it. I had
not taken hold of the intangible threads of that
veil which hid my own state of mind from me. And
here suddenly this veil was torn: Do you believe in
the real Presence, in the Sacrament as the Church
teaches it to you? I asked myself, and with implac-
able clearness I was forced to answer: No, I do
not believe it. Do you believe in the incarnation,
in the divinity of Christ? No, I no longer believe
it. I had at that moment a feeling of absolute
emptiness. I felt with a sudden and amazing
clarity that nothing of my Christian faith remained.
I was awestruck as a man who looks into a gaping
chasm.

Jouffroy, in his confession, has related in a touch-
ing manner the revolution which took place within
him, and the results of which were finally revealed
to him. I repeat his words, for they will help to

THE DOMINICAN CHAPEL 111

make intelligible something of that which was
passing within me. "This sad change did not take
place in the full light of my conscience; too many
scruples, too many keen and holy affections would
have rendered it impossible for me to have ac-
knowledged its progress to myself. It was con-
summated insensibly by an involuntary action in
which I was not an accomplice. For a long time
I had not been a Christian, but in the innocence of
my intentions I would have shuddered at suspecting
it or thought it a calumny against myself to speak
of it. ... In vain did I cling to the old beliefs as
a shipwrecked mariner to the debris of his boat, in
vain frightened by the unknown void in which I
was to float. I threw myself for the last time with
these, my old beliefs, towards my infancy, my
family, my country, towards everything that was
dear and sacred to me; the unyielding current of my
thoughts was stronger; relations, family, memories,
beliefs, it compelled me to leave them all; the in-
trospection continued more obstinately, and more
severely, in proportion to the rapidity toward which
it was nearing its end, and it did not cease until it
was attained." That which Jouffroy experienced on
that December night, in his solitary chamber, I ex-
perienced in my turn, that morning of Communion
in the silent chapel bathed in the light of May.

112 THE UNKNOWN SANCTUARY

In my case also the total collapse of my Christian
faith did not come to pass consciously, but certain
forces had acted within me, in a sense predeter-
mined, which slowly sapped the foundations of my
theological beliefs, the debris of which lay scattered
about me. And now the result of this travail, dim
to my understanding, was clear to my eyes, and it
was not possible to be lured from it again.

But the outcome of this revelation was quite dif-
ferent for me than for Jouffroy. It is easier for me
to retrace the phases of my self-scrutiny than to de-
scribe the moments that followed. It would cer-
tainly demand less time than I need to relate it
clearly, but at the exact moment when I realized
that I was no longer a Christian, in the theological
sense of the word, I felt, in an unforgettable way,
that everything was still left to me. Yes, every-
thing that was of the eternally true on this side of
shadows and appearances, symbols and images;
God himself, the living and supreme Reality,
unique and ineffable. It was no longer a question
of an article of abstract faith, affirmed by my in-
telligence; it was a perception of God, an infinitely
more simple and pure feeling of his presence and of
his love filling my soul to the depth, with such
power that the eternal truth of religion was at that

THE DOMINICAN CHAPEL 113

moment the evidence itself. I felt God truly with
my soul, as one feels air with one's body.

Very often in recalling that spring morning, I un-
derstood the celebrated exclamation of Pascal:
"Certitude! Certitude! Feeling! Vision! Joy!
Peace!" Yes, there is a certitude against which
the assaults of doubt, the negations of incredulity
dash themselves in vain like waves against a rock.
Perish all the myths and dogmas! God remains
to thee and with Him thou hast ALL. Thou art
his creature and his child and nothing in the world
can ever take thee out of his hands. Here is the
truth, and is there a more Catholic truth in the real
sense of the word than that which filled my soul,
filled it with the same joy, with the same peace that
Pascal experienced and which is the portion of the
believers of all churches, of all faiths, of all rites
since the day when the Patriarch Abraham, the
father of them all, according to the word of Scrip-
ture, set out full of confidence for the promised
land? Since then I have read many works, studied
many doctrines, visited many religious men of all
churches, prayed in different places of worship, but
all my outward experiences have added nothing es-
sential to the revelation which came to me on that
day and the benediction which, at this moment of
my writing, is still my most precious possession.

1 14 THE UNKNOWN SANCTUARY

I use the word revelation for want of another that
could better express, without any possible misunder-
standing, that which took place within me, but I do
not maintain that there is any parity between this
and what traditional religion, harking back to its
origin, implies under this term. Such experiences
once felt, permit us at least to perceive the fulness
of light that came to those inspired men whose
words remain for us sure and precious guides
despite the passing of the ages.

But one question will not fail to present itself to
the mind of many of my readers. Is it possible
that the personality of Jesus played no role, that it
could completely disappear from the field of inward
vision in such a religious experience coming to a
Catholic while at the foot of the holy altar, and
while he was performing in the required way the
most sacred act of his religion?

I must reply here with utmost frankness, that the
figure of Jesus was not absent during this solemn
meeting with the one and never ending truth, but
I felt at that time much more vividly than it is pos-
sible for me to express, that the faith of Jesus, as
far as it is possible for us to know it, must have
been like my own, more perfect, more profound,
more luminous, if you will, but exactly of the same
nature, When he cried out, My Father! he put

THE DOMINICAN CHAPEL 115

into that word, what it was given me in turn to put
into it, but his personality itself, so imperfectly
known to us, was no longer a vital and indispensable
thing in my religious life. Even to the contrary,
if there enters into his religion an element foreign
to me, my soul turns from it as from something
strange and hostile, and I would rather die a thou-
sand deaths than to suffer it to become a part of me.
When I left the chapel of the Dominicans on that
morning of communion I was no longer a Christian
in the historic sense of the word, but was I less or
more religious than when I entered there? What I
know well is that I had left the period of infancy
behind me, to attain my spiritual majority. I was
so wholly freed from all tutelage, to the joy of the
new attitude that had been vouchsafed to me, that
I did not feel at this time the need of telling any one
what had happened within me. I did not speak of
it to my mother nor to my father-confessor. I said
to myself that both in their own way were nearer to
God than was I, but nevertheless they could not un-
derstand me. I had the clear conviction that I had
arrived at the climax of a slow evolution, and all
things henceforth seemed new to me. Thus the
traveller who has climbed the steep slope of a moun-
tain discovers when arrived at its summit, the pan-
orama which extends on the other side. Such im-

116 THE UNKNOWN SANCTUARY

pressions cannot be described. It were presumptu-
ous to attempt it, but if my experience can bring but
a little light to a single soul, I would be culpable
in remaining silent.

Far be it from my thoughts to lead anyone to a
new religious faith, on condition that he first
abandon that other religion which was his. I repeat
that my aim is only to bear witness by my own
story to the divine reality of religious possibilities
in all forms of religion that are clothed in the gar-
ments of sincerity.

But to define and fortify this conviction at the
time to which this present narrative carries me back,
I still had need of light, which was given to me at
the right time, and which explains that the chief
event related in this chapter does not yet end my
story.

XII
THE JEWISH FAMILY

IF today I pass in review the various phases of my
religious evolution up to the important event, which
I have just recounted, I must recognize that this
entire development came to pass contrary to the
dogmas, or rather contrary to the central dogma of
historic Christianity. My soul instinctively repelled
the idea that the last word had been spoken once
for all, that at a fixed moment, in a certain time
and space absolute perfection had been realized,
in such a way that humanity had only henceforth
to look to the past, while painfully walking in the
footsteps of its far distant model. It was not against
the forms and the sacraments in themselves, that I
rebelled, for I always understood and loved their
language: it was against materializing the divine by
an exclusive and definite system. If the communion
had been presented to me as the gift of God adapted
to our real possibilities, and depositing the germ of
future potentiality in the bosom of humanity, of
which no church, no symbol, no theology, could ex-
press the glorious realities, I do not think I should

117

118 THE UNKNOWN SANCTUARY

ever have passed through the crisis described in the
preceding chapter; a benediction would have been
given me without any inner anguish. But the in-
carnation of God in a Messiah and of this Messiah
in a palpable form and henceforth changeless, that is
what repelled my soul, under the unconscious in-
fluence of the prophetic thoughts of Israel.

If I had the impression, at this time, that I re-
tained nothing of my Christianity, it was because
I only saw it in its successive ecclesiastical embodi-
ments, of which the Roman Catholic system seemed
to me the most logical and the most complete. I
would not be so positive now, for it does not
seem to me that the religious experience that I had
passed through on this communion morning
was foreign to the true spirit of the Gospel.
There is, in fact, in the Gospel a word that expresses
with divine simplicity the result of my experience.
It is the reply of Jesus to the question of the High
Priest: "Art thou the son of God?" "Thou hast
said." This word had originally a meaning other
than that which it had for the pious Onias who, at
the moment he was about to intercede for his broth-
ers, spoke of himself as the son of the house. It is
the synthesis of all prophetic instruction, and con-
veys so much better than do all the dogmatic teach-
ings the passing of the human soul from the in-

THE JEWISH FAMILY 119

tellectual or purely moral state, to the spiritual or
mystical, that is to say to the inmost feeling of
divine sonship.

That the sense of the Fatherhood of God, with
the light and the spiritual power which it communi-
cates to the human soul, embodies the pure religion
of the Gospel is debatable. But that it is expressed
on every page of the Gospel, making allowance for
those passages which are sadly out of tune with
this doctrine, is quite evident. One cannot find
any lack of continuity between the Hebrew Bible
and the Gospel.

Having come to this point in my religious evolu-
tion, I found myself at the same time far distant
from the historic development of Christianity, but
very near to its primitive conception, and in full ac-
cord in any case with the fundamental doctrines of
Judaism of which it is the outcome.

This I felt immediately and most keenly. I said
to myself that I was no longer a Christian in the
proper sense of the word, but a Jew, probably as
Jesus had been a Jew. As a result of my early edu-
cation I felt the need of expressing my religious life
through definite forms, and the thought came to me,
more clearly than before, to undergo a complete
conversion to Judaism, with which my soul found
itself henceforth in full accord.

120 THE UNKNOWN SANCTUARY

From the moment that I conceived this project
it seemed right that I should tell it to the official
representative of Judaism of my native town and
ask his counsel. Nevertheless I did not. I passed
again and again on the Quai Tilsitt, before the
synagogue where the Chief Rabbi lived, without
ever deciding to pay him the visit that my situation
called for. Perhaps the thought of the fresh dif-
ficulties that I would encounter on the part of my
mother, the sad scene which I could foresee, impelled
me to put off the moment of decisive explanations,
but I ought also say that another feeling restrained
me, the vague fear of disappointment.

Later, I had the most affectionate relations with
the lamented Chief Rabbi Alfred Levy, and came to
have a veritable worship for the memory of .this
worthy pastor, who was goodness itself, and who
would surely have received me at that time with
his customary kindness. Alfred Levy was an
eloquent preacher, one of the most agreeable to
listen to, and nevertheless his sermons did not please
me. It was at the time when the orators of the
Jewish pulpit believed themselves obliged to sound
the note of patriotism in every discourse. This may
have been pleasant to their usual hearers, but to my
ears it sounded strange. All the sermons that I
had heard at the synagogue of Lyons on the great

THE JEWISH FAMILY 121

holydays were certainly superior in matter and in
form to many of those I had listened to in the
church, and yet something was lacking in them.
The moral commonplaces they elegantly developed
minimized the Jewish religion in my eyes. When
the Chazan* sang forth the Hebrew melodies with
his beautiful voice, I again found the soul of Israel,
and even without perfectly understanding I com-
muned with it, but when the rabbi spoke, and in
most excellent French, I was carried back to the
banalities of a religion with neither originality nor
depth.

This impression, the gifts of M. Alfred Levy
could not lessen, and I am not the only one to have
felt it. Christians who occasionally visited the Jew-
ish temple, have expressed themselves to me more
than once in the same way. The Jewish ceremonial
has eloquence for them, but the effort at verbal
translation has none of it, and I understand the
deeper lying reasons of the Orthodox of other days
against the introduction of preaching in the common
tongue. In synagogue worship it seems like an
hors-d'oeuvre and is a concession of doubtful value
to the customs of other cults.

However that may be, I did not visit the Chief
Rabbi of Lyons as I had for a moment thought of

*Precentor of the synagogue.

122 THE UNKNOWN SANCTUARY

doing, and toward the end of the month of August
of this same year, I left on a vacation and went
directly to Nice, where as a young boy I had been
taken after a grave illness. It was here that I
was to come in contact with Judaism, or to speak
more exactly, with Israelites.

At that time, Nice still possessed two synagogues
the one official, or Concordate, the other inde-
pendent. The latter situated on the rue du Palais
was called the Reform Israelite Temple. The
foundation of this second synagogue did not have
its origin in theological or cultural questions; it only
held to certain differences which arose at the time of
the consistorial elections of 1867, following which a
schism came about in the community of Nice. The
dissenters took the necessary steps at Paris in con-
nection with the government, to obtain authorization
to open a separate place of worship, and their request
was granted on condition that the separation be
justified formally by taking the title "Reform."
How was it that I chose this particular synagogue
in preference to the other for my visit on the Sat-
urday following my arrival? Probably curiosity
impelled me, who was by instinct a traditionalist,
to see in what a "reform" of Judaism could consist.
All the same my choice on that morning was fraught
with great moment for the rest of my story.

THE JEWISH FAMILY 123

The officiating minister of this independent com-
munity, which indeed had no rabbi, was the vener-
able Simon Levy, a man at the same time of
exemplary faith and of rare virtues, in whose soul
there vibrated powerfully the breath of ancient
Chazanim.

During half a century, he had consecrated
to the community of Nice, at first in the old
temple of the ancient ghetto, then in the independent
synagogue of the rue du Palais, a consummate
knowledge of the Hebraic liturgy and an indefati-
gable devotion. The ecclesiastical costume used in
the official synagogues being forbidden to the dis-
senters, Simon Levy wore neither the gown nor the
cap of the Chazanim; he officiated in top hat, which
was as little aesthetic as possible. But when one
saw him at the teba* and above all when one heard
him, one forgot this detail. Pupil of Rabbi Pontremoli
of sainted memory, Simon Levy grew up in the
surroundings of a generation of believers for whom
religious practices were the sole joy and preoccupa-
tion of every moment, and from his sixteenth year
he began to conduct religious exercises with re-
markable conscientiousness and ability. He brought
thereto all the seriousness and the piety of the true
sheliach tzibbur, the messenger of the community.

*Altar.

124 THE UNKNOWN SANCTUARY

He put so much soul into the performance of
the liturgic ceremonies, and interpreted the prayers
with such singular fervor, that the emotion that
overcame him at times, won over his auditors. The
disciples of the rue du Palais still remember having
seen on the high holydays, a Catholic priest carry
his chair into the court of the synagogue, install
himself at a window near the teba, and follow the
Jewish prayers for hours at a time. Thus could
a religious soul find edification in taking part in
services conducted by this excellent minister.

It was Simon Levy who revealed to me the beauty
of the Jewish liturgy and who also helped me to
understand the family character so peculiar to the
worship of Israel. In fact, the dwelling of this
pious Chazan, to which I was soon introduced, was
a veritable sanctuary redolent of the perfume of
daily observances. There he observed all the do-
mestic ceremonies with the majesty of an ancient
patriarch, in the expressive rhythm of the Jewish
year. When, after the kiddush* of Friday evening
and the holydays, he gave with deep-felt piety the
benediction to his children and grand-children who
surrounded him in touching devotion, he appeared
to me as a rabbi of ancient days, evoking to my
sight all the faith, all the fervor of vanished genera-

*Prayer over the wine.

THE JEWISH FAMILY 125

tions. I was destined some years later to enter into
the intimacy of this delightful dwelling, and Simon
Levy, who had received me from the first with
such frank friendship, ended by looking upon me
as one of his sons; he blessed me with the same
tenderness; and I think of it as an exceptional favor
of Providence that I was able for a long time to
enjoy the benefits of relations so pious and sweet.
Thanks to him, I was enabled to know and to
understand all the charm of the true Jewish life
as it was lived of old. I heard him recall day after
day, with never ending interest, the remembrance
of the piety of other days, and to have known this
dear and noble sage consoles me a little for the
sadness to which modern Judaism gives rise, become
so indifferent on the whole to the blessed influence
of the religion of its ancestors.

In this environment of the "reform" synagogue of
Nice, I was received at once in the most cordial
manner. People were much interested by the un-
usual story of a young Christian who was able to
follow the prayers in Hebrew. One of those who
evinced the greatest sympathy for me was the dean
of the community David Moise, an aged man,
pleasant and cultivated. Learning that I intended
to pass a part of my vacation in Italy, he earnestly
persuaded me to continue my voyage to Leghorn

126 THE UNKNOWN SANCTUARY

where, he told me, the Chief Rabbi Elijah Ben-
amozegh would be delighted to see me, and could
most helpfully guide me. He therefore gave me
a letter of introduction to one of his relatives
living in Leghorn, and I departed for Italy so
that I might arrive in that city on the eve of the
Jewish New Year. The Leghorn Jew, to whom
I was commended, received me warmly and helped
me to see all that the Jewish community could offer
of interest to a stranger. The great Temple with
its multitude of the faithful on the holydays seemed
superb to me; in fact, it is considered the most
beautiful in Europe after the synagogue of Amster-
dam, and there I conceived a high opinion of the
vitality of Italian Judaism. This was the first
edifice of such importance that I had visited. Un-
fortunately the Chief Rabbi, Elijah Benamozegh,
to whom I was to be presented, was ill at the mo-
ment, and he did not appear in the Temple during
the services of Rosh Hashanah*. I left Leghorn
without having seen him, which was a matter of
keen disappointment to me, because after all that
had been told me about him at Nice as well as at
Leghorn, far from hesitating to present myself to
him, I hoped much from meeting him, and in this
I was not to be mistaken.

*The New Year's services.

THE JEWISH FAMILY 127

Nevertheless having returned to Lyons, I took
the first steps in the study of the law, but without
neglecting my favorite studies between times, and I
continued to nourish the project of embracing
Judaism while finding if possible a; way of keeping
the matter secret, in order to spare my mother the
pain that I feared for her. I was no longer thinking
of Leghorn, when toward the end of October, I re-
ceived a letter from Italy from Chief Rabbi
Elijah Benamozegh. "I learned with regret," he
wrote, "that you asked for me on the New Year's
day at the Temple, to which I could not go because
I was ill. In thanking you for your kind attention
I hasten to place myself at your service, ready to
respond to your wishes, as much as possible." This
unexpected word was like a message sent me from
Heaven.

We should never neglect, in matters spiritual, any
act of kindness towards our neighbors, even when
according to our human vision it may seem useless to
us. In this world responsibilities are not only those
of wealth and social position, there are also those of
intelligence and knowledge, those of virtue and
moral worth. He who has received much as his
portion ought be ready to give much to others.
This simple note addressed to ai young stranger by
the illustrious rabbi, to whom the fatigue of age

128 THE UNKNOWN SANCTUARY

and incessant work might have furnished the best
of reasons to excuse him from writing to an un-
known person, this simple word came at an impor-
tant moment, initiating a correspondence which was
to determine my entire religious evolution.

XIII
ELIJAH BENAMOZEGH

"Stand ye in the ways and see

And ask for the old paths,

Where is the good way and walk therein,

And ye shall find rest for your souls."

Jeremiah VI, 16

THE occasion at last presented itself to me to obtain
from one of the most eminent representatives of
Judaism all the explanations that I could ask, all
the counsel that my difficult situation called for,
and this help which was so needed, was offered
me not within the limitations of a passing inter-
view, but by means of a correspondence which per-
mitted me carefully to examine all the aspects of
the serious question before my conscience. Of all
possible solutions Providence granted me the best.
I felt greatly relieved and was resolved to profit
to the utmost by this unexpected helpi

In my first letter I gave a faithful account of the
phases through which my religious life had passed.
It was a new general confession that I addressed

129

130 THE UNKNOWN SANCTUARY

to Leghorn, but it did not meet the fate of that of
La Chartreuse, and it is most singular that the
rabbi should have better understood the young
Catholic who bared his soul to him in all simplicity,
than the monk who was trained by the life of the
cloister to the understanding of souls. For the one,
truth was a treasure to be gained by mighty bat-
tling at the price of much toil and sacrifice, whilst
to the other it appeared as a discipline of beliefs,
the authority of which one may not question without
committing the sin of pride.

"Because of the confidence you place in me,"
wrote Benamozegh, "I must in turn reply with ut-
most frankness. You fully deserve that I also should
bare my soul to you. The subject that occupies
us is too sacred to permit the slightest dissimulation
on my part, or the faintest reticence. Your Pascal,
among others, taught me the respect due to religious
unrest, and meeting a believing soul, such as yours,
exercises so powerful an attraction over my spirit,
that even had I a thousand times as many duties
as I have, I should always find time to write to you.
I pray that you may understand me better than I am
able to express myself, viewing the impossibility of
exhausting the subject with which we are to deal.
I beg of you above all to believe that, true or false
as it may seem to you, nothing which I shall have

ELIJAH BENAMOZEGH 131

to write, nothing that I shall! say is improvised for
the occasion. Everything is the fruit of long medi-
tations, which date from the time when the first
studies of m'y youth, impelled me irresistibly toward
the path in which you aim to walk today."

It is difficult to imagine language more likely than
this to win the heart. Even now I cannot reread
these words, and so many others like them, of the
revered master without being filled with awe. The
fervor they evinced for the worship of the Good
and the True, was more than encouragement for me;
it was a light. I felt that Truth existed, that it
is beautiful, and that one never seeks it in vain.
Thenceforth I no longer doubted that God, who had
caused me so vividly to feel the reality of His pres-
ence, would not less clearly show me the way in
which He would be served by me.

The first question that I put to Benamozegh
was a question of a general character, but which it
was necessary to explain in my particular case.
What ought one think of the opinion according to
which an honest man may not change his religion
without failing in some way to his duty? Thus
the world often judges, though in other ways not
inspired by religious sentiments. I was convinced,
for my part, that this was only a prejudice founded
upon social conveniences. My Catholic education

132 THE UNKNOWN SANCTUARY

confirmed me in this point of view, for the church
recognized no restriction upon the right of con-
version, be it well understood, so that it be exercised
to the profit of the church. But what does Judaism
teach on the same subject and what advice had
a rabbi, its authorized interpreter, to give to me
in the position in which I found myself? This is
what I wished to know. The reply of Benamozegh
was as frank and as clear as I could have desired.
It will not fail to startle those who commonly mis-
understand the spirit of Judaism on this question.
He wrote me as follows:

"Concerning the opinion that every one ought
observe the status quo, remain in the religion of his
birth, this is what I would say to you; in general, if
it be possible without having to sacrifice one's own
convictions in any way, there is certainly nothing
more desirable than fidelity to the faith of one's
fathers, and for him who is in this state of perfect
good faith, there is nothing more helpful or better.
But pay good heed. When personal convictions no
longer correspond to the beliefs in which we have
been brought up, when to the contrary they impel
us toward another religion, assuredly one ought
observe the greatest prudence, examine these ques-
tions in all their aspects, and ponder them many
times with all the application of which one's intel-
ligence is capable. If one be a man of letters, or

ELIJAH BENAMOZEGH 133

in the contrary case, suspend one's judgment and
set oneself resolutely to study in order to be able
to take a position with knowledge of the subject.
But if the studies to which one devotes oneself and
the years that pass, only confirm the conviction that
one is in error, if more and more it appears clearly
to us that the truth is elsewhere, then tell me by
what right can I continue to deny it, in going
through the act of submission, which according to
the cry of my conscience is error?

In these wise and noble words the great soul of
the master revealed itself to me. He had written
in the preface of his History of the Essenes: "The
first right of our fellow creatures is to get the
truth from us." For him nothing could prevail
against fidelity to the light of conscience, against
the love of Truth carried, if necessary, to the most
heroic sacrifices. Such words left no door open to
any compromise, to any attenuation of duty to
truth, and seemed to place me logically under the
obligation of embracing Judaism in order to obey
my conscience. The rest of this reply which
plunged me into amazement will seem remarkable
to my readers.

"All that I write you is from a general point of
view, and thus purely theoretical. In effect, I

134 THE UNKNOWN SANCTUARY

hasten to declare, this has no application to your
particular case, in the duty you believe you have, to
become converted to Judaism in the sense in which
you understand it. Surely, if you feel yourself im-
peratively moved to do this, if you absolutely de-
mand it because without it the peace of your soul
is not possible, then without doubt, I would be the
first to say to you, as the Talmud obliges us to say
in regard to whosoever demands this privilege, for
it is a privilege to enter into the Synagog: c lf
you desire at every cost, that it should be so, if no
argument to the contrary can swerve you, then
welcome in the name of God. Benedictus qui venit
in nomine Domini.' But know well, read this word
and meditate thereon, reread it again, meditate
again, for it holds for you the key to the entire
religious question: to be at one with truth, in the
grace of our God, to belong to the true religion what
more can I tell you to be our brother, as you
would be, you need not embrace Judaism in the
way you think of doing, I mean by submitting to
the yoke of our Law.

"We Jews have in our keeping the religion des-
tined for the entire human race, the only religion
to which the Gentiles shall be subject and by which
they are to be saved, truly by ^ - Grace of God, as
were our patriarchs before the Law. Could you
suppose that the true religion, that which God
destines for all humanity, dates only from Moses,
and carries the impress of a special people? What
an error! Learn that the plan of God is

ELIJAH BENAMOZEGH 135

vaster. The religion of humanity is no other than
Noachism* not that it was instituted b> Noah, but
because it dates from the covenant made by God
with humanity in the person of this just man. Here
is the religion preserved by Israel *o be tran:mitted
to the Gentiles. This is the path which lies open
before your efforts, before mine as well, to spread
the knowledge thereof, as it is my duty to do. And
it lies open to the efforts of any one, whosoever be-
lieves in Revelation, without necessarily adhering
to Mosaism, which is the particular statute of Israel,
or to the Christian, or to the Mos!cni churches, be-
cause these are found _d on the principle of the
abolition of the Law even for the Jows, and because
they ignore in the Jewish prophets all that you
yourself have so well kno..n how to find in them.

"I invite you to turn your thoughts toward that
which existed before the thought had come to Peter
to impose the Mosaic Law upon the Gentiles, and
to Paul to exempt tl^ Jews themselves from the
Law; in which both were mistaken, as though they
knew nothing of the central ideas of the Judaism
which was their own. It was a matter of returning
to the ancient principle; Mosaism for the Jews (and
for those who, strangers to Israel by birth, and

*The Noachian Laws were supposed by the ancient
Rabbis to be binding upon all men before the revelation of
Sinai to the Jews. This epithet was applied to them be-
cause all mankind was descended from Noah. These laws
forbid the worship of idols, blasphemy, lawlessness, murder,
adultery, and robbery. A few other laws were added by
the Rabbis.

136 THE UNKNOWN SANCTUARY

without being held by any bond, wish nevertheless
to belong to Israel), and the religion of the patri-
archs for the Gentiles. And as this religion whose
triumph the patriarchs foretold for Messianic times,
as the religion of humanity converted to the worship
of the true God, is no other than Noachism, one may
continue to call it Christianity, disencumbered, of
course, of the trinity and the incarnation, beliefs
which are contrary to the Old Testament, and per-
haps even to the New."

But here is the delicate matter on which Jew
and Christian have always been separated. The
Rabbi of Leghorn declared nevertheless that a
reconciliation is not impossible, and he returned
with too much insistence to this subject for it not
to have been the expression of a well established
conviction:

"As to the person of Jesus of whom you do not
speak, I tell you nevertheless, because it is impor-
tant and because possibly the question is most legiti-
mately at the bottom of your thoughts, that on
condition that divinity be not attributed to him,
there would be no reason whatever not to make of
him a prophet, to consider him a man charged by
God with an august religious mission, without be-
cause of this altering any part of the ancient word
of God, and without abolishing for the Jews the
Mosaic Law, as his disciples pretended to do, thus

ELIJAH BENAMOZEGH 137

misrepresenting his explicit teachings. See Matthew
V, 17-19.*

"The future of the human race lies in this
formula. If you come to convince yourself of it,
you will be much more precious to Israel than if
you submit to the Law of Israel. You will be the
instrument of the Providence of God to humanity.

"See how God's plan for you is in consonance
with your present duty. If ever you could have
thought that, through the compulsion of your re-
ligious convictions you were called upor. to inflict
torture upon the heart of your mother, know that
Judaism, far from prescribing anything of the kind,
asks you to take an entirely contrary attitude, and
places your filial duty in accord with your religious
duty. I would not speak to you with too much
hardihood, but I cannot withhold from you that
your duty shuts out the Catholic priesthood.

"If your faith today were that of your childhood
who would dare to turn you from it? But in your
state of mind what torture you will prepare for
yourself and what sacrilege if you preach beliefs
that you know to be lies! No, no, noth'ng can
force you to a perpetual dissimulation that will

*The verses that Benamozegh here cites are the following:
"Think not that I am come to destroy the law, or the
prophets: I am not come to destroy, but to fulfill. For
verily I say unto you 'Till heaven and earth pass, one jot
or one tittle shall in no wise pass from the law, till all be
fulfilled. Whosoever therefore shall break one of these
least commandments and shall teach men so, he shall be
called the least in the kingdom of Heaven; but whosoever
shall do and teach them, the same shall be called great in
the kingdom of heaven.'"

138 THE UNKNOWN SANCTUARY

become the martyrdom of your life. If, as so many
others, you were a sceptic, you might as well preach
one doctrine as another, but it is your right that I
speak to you as to a believer. And then . . . truly
I am surprised that I have expressed myself so
freely. See therein only a proof of my great sin-
cerity and of the deep interest that you have in-
spired in me."

The conclusion of this letter filled me with ad-
miration of the elevation of thought of my illustrious
correspondent, and for the Jewish doctrine which he
represented, and which did no violence to my feel-
ings as a loving son, desiring if it might be possible
to avoid giving pain to her who was the dearest
being in the world to me. How different to the
language of that enthusiast, who one day in good
faith no doubt, but misguided by the very letter of
her gospel, had imperiously driven me to an act
through which my mother suffered cruelly. There
is even in the most sincere fanaticism evident error,
since it outrages the fundamental principles of re-
ligion which it pretends to defend. The words of
Benamozegh, full of wisdom and of gentleness bore
the stamp of truth.

All the same, I do not know if the statement of
the rabbi, which seems so luminous to me today,
will seem equally clear to my readers, and I must
confess to my great shame that at the moment when

ELIJAH BENAMOZEGH 139

I first read it, my perplexity was great, and I al-
together misunderstood the meaning of his words,
which had the effect upon me of a plea in favor of
a certain conception of Christianity. I fancied that
the Jewish theologian was inviting me to join a
quite conventional form of Christianity, that could
be explained in my own way, and wherein the figure
of Jesus would become the object of a discreet ra-
tionalistic worship, that would express the thought
of modern liberal Protestantism. But Protestant-
ism, because of its lack of logic, had always filled
me with an unconquerable dislike. It embodied to
my mind a phase of evolution that I had outgrown.
As to the person of Jesus, the lack of serious bases
that would enable us to arrive at a clear idea of his
role in history, made me rather believe that the best
way to enter into the thoughts of the master, of
which the centuries have regrettably changed the
form, was still more to deepen the teachings of the
religion of his fathers, for which he seems, not even
according to the gospels, to have ever dreamed of
substituting another religion.

On the other hand, the intellectual and religious
training that I owed to Catholicism made me think
of religion as a collection of beliefs and practices
having authority over conscience, arid necessary to
the salvation of the soul.

140 THE UNKNOWN SANCTUARY

Ought not the worship that one knows to be
stained with error make way for that which one
recognizes as the very expression of truth? The
religion that Benamozegh was presenting to me did
not seem to hold a providential solution of the
problem. Noachism, of which I was hearing for the
first time, surprised and repelled me as an incon-
sistent thing, the name of which was even strange.
Not to be any longer a Christian and to retain the
name, not to be a Jew and yet after a fashion to
acclaim Judaism, was an equivocal position which
had no attraction for me.

Thus despite all the admiration that I had al-
ready professed for the doctrines of Judaism, I
did not yet see it in its true light. I continued to
belittle it to the proportions of a church with definite
outlines, competing with other churches outside of
which there could be neither inward peace nor
fruitful activity for a soul in that stage of faith
wherein I found myself.

XIV
THE CATHOLICISM OF ISRAEL

I EXPRESSED my doubts with utter frankness in the
letters which I wrote to the Rabbi of Leghorn, beg-
ging for explanations, which brought me an unusual
reply. The following letter which I received from
him throws light upon various aspects of Jewish
doctrine, assuredly not generally known.

"Before all things I wish you to be fully assured
that the Noachic religion that you say you heard
mentioned by me for the first time (and the
majority of people are in your class) is not a dis-
covery that I personally have made, still less is it of
my contriving, a sort of more or less happy polemic
expedient. No, it is an established fact discussed
in every page of our Talmud, generally admitted by
our wise men, to be little known and much misun-
derstood. Added to this is the difficulty of the sub-
ject which we are discussing. It alone can explain
to us the uncertainties and the diverse tendencies
which have manifested themselves on the question
of the Mosaic Law in the early days of Christianity.

141

142 THE UNKNOWN SANCTUARY

There we see the central point, where the break
arose between Judaism and Christianity which has
been stressed more and more.

"Judaism makes a distinction between Jews and
Gentiles. According to its teachings, its leaders are
subject as priests of humanity to the hierarchy of
Moses, while the laymen are only subject to the
ancient and abiding universal religion, to the serv-
ice of which Jews and Judaism are utterly dedi-
cated. Christianity on the contrary created the
most unhappy confusion, either in imposing the
Law on the Gentiles through Peter and James and
the Jewish Christians with them, or in abolishing
through Paul this same Law for the Jews them-
selves. Consider all things well and in their rela-
tions to each other, and you will see that Noachism,
which astonishes you, is nothing else than Messian-
ism, the authentic form of Christianity of which
Israel was the guardian and the mouthpiece. I re-
peat to you that this does not exclude the possibility
for every Noachide (the layman of humanity) who
feels the call to the priesthood of humankind,
otherwise known as the Law of Israel, to use his
right which, do not forget it, never becomes a duty
to embrace Mosaism, namely to enter the priesthood
itself.
"If I understand you correctly, Noachism seems

THE CATHOLICISM OF ISRAEL 143

to you a far distant and superannuated thing, and
you ask how, after nineteen centuries of Christian-
ity, after all the religious progress that our Bible
and your Gospel represent, I can dream of taking
you back to the rudiments of the worship founded
after the flood. Is this possible? Yes, and is it
possible that you do not see that perpetuity, that
future immutability could not exist save on condi-
tion that they also existed in the past?

"There is no doubt that the Bible, aside from
the universalistic passion of the prophets, gives the
impression that in the carrying out of the compact
made with the fathers, God was chiefly concerned
with the chosen people, to the exclusion of other
peoples. Hence the accusation leveled against
Judaism that it could, never rise in its entirety above
the conception of a national God." To this objec-
tion Benaraozegh replies:

"Can it be imagined for a single moment that
after having concerned himself so much with the
descendants of Noah, which means with all human-
ity, according to Genesis, God, after long centuries
of waiting, would give a special law to the Israelites
appointed to be the priests of humanity, and would
not have troubled himself in any way about the rest
of the human race, rejecting it, until the appearance
of Christianity, leaving it totally abandoned, with-

144 THE UNKNOWN SANCTUARY

out revelation and without law? And again, is it
reasonable to conceive that in abolishing the
Noachide covenant of Genesis and where is that
abolition to be found God would during all this
long interval leave no other resource to man than
the help of his poor reason? This would have been
unreasonable, unjust, improvident, unworthy even of
a mortal, for it would entirely undermine faith in
the necessity of Revelation.

"No, no; all this is impossible, and consequently
not only has the Noachide law never ceased to be
in force, but even Israel, with its special code,
Mosaism, was created for it, to safeguard it, to
teach it, to spread it. The Jews thus exercised, I
repeat, the function of priests of humanity, and
found themselves subject in this way to the priestly
rules which concern them exclusively: the laws of
Moses.

"But you ask me, where can one find the code of
this Noachic Law, of this universal religion, which
is true Catholicism? First, admit that if this code
did not exist, it would be the fault of God himself
not to have established it, or not to have assured its
perpetuity. Nobody, indeed, will maintain that the
Noachic covenant of Genesis is but an unimpor-
tant incident and not a matter of great moment.
Further, do you not see that Genesis itself contains

THE CATHOLICISM OF ISRAEL 145

precepts given to Noah for all his descendants?
This solemn covenant of God with Noah and his
offspring is recalled by Isaiah (LIV. 9); it, is a cove-
nant sanctioned by the divine promise with the rain-
bow as pledge of perpetuity. Up to the last pages
of the Prophets, Noah is with Daniel and Job one
of the three just men held up as examples.

"And yet all this is a small matter compared to
the great thing which the Talmud reveals to us.
This monument of Tradition occupies itself in fact
with a marked predilection for everything that con-
cerns the Noachic religion and legislation."

The master insisted on this point with all the more
earnestness because these things are unknown to
Christians and even to the majority of Jews.

"Not alone does the Talmud comment upon, and
develop as far as possible the Mosaic and prophetic
texts on this subject, but it opens wide the sources of
tradition, rich in many other ways, concerning the
ideas of this universal religion. And this, mark
well, at the very moment when Israel, its savants in
the lead, was exposed to continual persecution, and
was placed under the ban of humanity. Yes, it
was between two scaffolds, between two funeral
piles that these great sages, these wonderful

146 THE UNKNOWN SANCTUARY

martyrs discussed and codified with amazing
strength of spirit and with angelic serenity, the re-
ligion of humanity, the Noachic law, as much as,
and even in greater measure than the Jewish laws
themselves.

"You will find there in abundance the funda-
mental elements of the code that you are seeking
and you who know Hebrew can, without difficulty,
convince yourself of it. We who are not Karaites,
the Protestants of Judaism, we who like the Catholics
venerate tradition, find ourselves quite at ease
on many questions and particularly on this one.
If one take into account the circumstances in the
midst of which the wise men of the Talmud dis-
cussed these questions, their discussions bear the
divine seal, beyond cavil. They make an impress
upon the faith and upon the admiration of every
one; they raise to a height that even you do not
dream of, Rabbinic Judaism and its authorized in-
terpreters; and if you yield yourself to this admira-
tion, do not imagine that in so doing you oppose
the word of Jesus in his vehement denunciation of
the Pharisees, adherents of precisely that school
which gave to the world the mighty example of
abnegation. It is now well established that there
were good as well as bad Pharisees, and the latter

THE CATHOLICISM OF ISRAEL 147

were flayed in the Talmud with less restraint even
than in the Gospels."

The agreement of the Synagogue with the Cath-
olic Church on the question of tradition and of its
role in revealed religion was often the subject of the
commentaries of Benamozegh, concerned as all his
writings were with finding a meeting place for
them.

"You seem dissatisfied with the antiquity of
Noachism, and you do not realize that antiquity is
the most infallible sign of truth. Consequently, the
further back it goes, the more it appeals to us.
You ask for subsequent developments. Nothing
hinders you from achieving them. It is indeed the
spirit of the Noachic revelation, as it is of the
Mosaic revelation, and that is the same Revelation,
that it is changeless and progressive at the same
time. You want nothing to do with simple deism
and you are right a thousand times; I speak of the
deism of the philosophers. As to the Noachic
deism, it is the pure monotheism of Moses and of
our prophets, and in dogmatic definition, there is in
reality, and there should be, no distinction between
Mosaism and Noachism. The only difference is of
a practical nature. It consists simply in a little

148 THE UNKNOWN SANCTUARY

more freedom granted according to Noachism as to
metaphysical or even theological speculations.
Very far from permitting it to sink into pure ra-
tionalism, our tradition imposes upon the Noachic
proselyte, called later the proselyte of the gate, one
formal condition, the acceptance of this same re-
ligion, not at all as the sample fruit of human reason
but as the teaching of divine Revelation. What
more could you desire?

"I have just spoken of the proselyte of the gate,
that is to say, of the Noachide in person. It is in
truth with the Noachide himself that the Pentateuch
is concerned in specifying that this proselyte is in
no way obliged to observe the Mosaic law. This is
so true that the Torah obliges us to give to him the
animal which it is forbidden to us Jews to eat. We
must give it to him instead of selling it to the
stranger, or Gentile, or pagan, obvious proof that
according to the Pentateuch, this proselyte is no
longer considered a Gentile or pagan, neither is he
assimilated to the Jew. So what does he represent,
if not precisely this Noachide whose name sounds
so strange to your ear? The difficulty which you
experience does not hinder the Noachide from be-
coming a part of the Church Universal; on the con-
trary, it is the Noachides themselves who make up
the faithful, the people of that true Catholic Church

THE CATHOLICISM OF ISRAEL 149

of which Israel is the priest. Israel would have
no reason to exist if these people of God did not
also exist. What are the priests, I ask you, with-
out the laymen? What would /, a Jew be, if you,
who are not a Jew, were not here as a faithful mem-
ber of the great Church of God in whose services I
find myself placed?"

One can not sufficiently admire the way in which
the master used language that could be most easily
understood in addressing himself to a young Catholic.
But what was even more remarkable was that here
was no position assumed for the occasion because
of the needs of the argument; but the exact ex-
pression of his beliefs.

"You see, then, that you are greatly mistaken in
speaking of isolation, of individwlism. I will not
cease repeating to you, that the Noachide has his
place with the only Universal Church, faithful to
that religion, as the Jew is the priest thereof,
charged, do not forget this, to teach humanity the
religion of its layman, as it is held, in that which
concerns him personally, and to practice the religion
of the priests. Without doubt every layman has
the right to become a priest, that is, you are free
to become a Jew, if you absolutely demand it, pro-

ISO THE UNKNOWN SANCTUARY

vided that you realize perfectly that you are in no
wise bound in conscience to do so, and that it is in no
way necessary, nor even desirable.

"Here is the exact expression of the doctrine of
Judaism. Here is one side of Judaism, and to my
thinking it is the greatest, although it has escaped,
I admit, and still too generally, escapes attention.
But it is nonetheless an incontrovertible truth; it
is the most important key to all the difficulties that
one encounters in the religious history of humanity,
and notably in the relations of biblical religions
among themselves.

"If you adopt the religious position that I would
like to see you adopt, you will really belong to
Judaism and to Christianity at the same time, the
latter under the correction of Judaism on three es-
sential points: the question of the Incarnation, the
manner of understanding the Trinity, and the aboli-
tion of the Mosaic Law for the Jews themselves.

"I have said that you are free to become a priest
I mean a Jewish priest or to remain a Noachide
that is to say, a layman. But know that in re-
maining a layman you will, as a Noachide, be free-
and the Jew is not so to take from the Jewish Law,
from Mosaism all that suits your personal religious
need in the way of precept, but which would not be

THE CATHOLICISM OF ISRAEL 151

an obligation, while the Jew has not the freedom to
choose; he is subject to the entire Law."

The master then approached the main, question of
the abolition of the Law, of which Paul made him-
self the indefatigable apostle. According to him, as
Christianity had the right to preach the great prin-
ciple of universal brotherhood, a principle drawn
from Judaism, but which he was wrong in not tem-
pering by that of national fraternity, he was
equally right to proclaim the independence of the
non-Jews in regard to the Mosaic law, but he could
not see that the religious balance required the main-
tenance of this law for the Jews.

"No, it was not Jesus who refused to subject the
Gentiles to the Mosaic Law, it was Judaism itself,
it was Moses, it was God himself following the plan
he established in the beginning. Jesus certainly did
not wish it, and in this he was right, he saw much
more clearly than did Peter and James, as he also
saw much more clearly than did Paul, when declar-
ing that he came not to abolish the Law, he held his
brother Jews under the authority of the Law by
that very fact. What am I doing in speaking to
you as I do, if not bringing you back to him and to
his pure teaching? Yes, Jesus was right, and de-

152 THE UNKNOWN SANCTUARY

served all praise when he gave freedom to the Gen-
tiles in regard to the Mosaic Law, but his disciples
erred when later they proclaimed the same liberty
for the Jews.

"Remember this: you will be in error, in your
turn, you will retrograde, if you become converted
to Judaism imagining that you are embracing the
only trule religion destined for all humanity. Such
a conversion would only be possible for you, I do
not say desirable, if you take Judaism for what it
is, that is to say, thinking of it as a priesthood.
This supposes quite naturally another aspect of the
same religion, another law, if you will, called Chris-
tianity or Noachism as you please. You can re-
main within this Christianity, on condition, of
course, that it be reviewed and corrected by the
Jewish priesthood."

It is impossible to explain more clearly what the
master himself called the Catholicism of Israel.
One feels that such words reflect something quite
other than an individual opinion, they have all the
majesty of authentic tradition which they faithfully
interpret.

"I would not leave the statement of this very im-
portant point, of this vital doctrine of true Judaism,

THE CATHOLICISM OF ISRAEL 153

the possible and peaceful coexistence, even the nec-
essary dependence of these two aspects, of these
two elements, of the Church oj God', the Jewish
priesthood and the lay statute or Noachide which
is that of the non-Jews, without showing you the
importance attached to it by our Talmud. You
know with what earnestness Moses had warned us
concerning sacrifices made outside of the sacred pre-
cincts. Very well, according to our doctrine, this
restriction does not exist for the Noachide and even
to the contrary, Jesus is the faithful echo of our
tradition when he foretells a time when the worship
of God will be observed everywhere, of course, by
the Gentiles a means of reconciling these words
with those of Isaiah, 'I will lead them to my holy
mountain.'

"We are forced to this conclusion: does the Cath-
olicism of your birth satisfy the ideal I have ex-
plained? With the frankness of an honest man,
without the shadow of a racial or religious prejudice,
but on the contrary with all the sympathy I have
always had for Christianity in general for Cath-
olicism in particular and I have been reproached
for it, with Maimonides and Juda Halevi, our
sages, who see in real Christianity the precursor of
future Messianism, I reply to you yes and no at
the same time. Yes, insofar as it is in accord with

154 THE UNKNOWN SANCTUARY

the immutable truth that it has combated, while
pretending by a singular contradiction to be im-
mutable, and notably in that which concerns the be-
lief in tradition in general which belong to Cath-
olicism. No, insofar as it strays from the doctrine
professed by the leadership that God himself ap-
pointed from the days of the Pentateuch until the
end of Prophetism and its last echoes with Malachi.
"For you, for all those who would belong to the
true religion without entering the Jewish priesthood,
the one road; to follow is clearly denned: it is Noach-
ism or proselytism of the gate,* without the obliga-
tions of the Mosaic Law, though under its direction,
a religion whose statutes were made before the days
of Jesus, nay, since the remotest days of antiquity,
under the care of Judaism and recorded in its sacred
books and in its abiding traditions. The supreme
duty for you as for me, is to remember these truths,
to bring them to light, to say to Christianity, to
Islam, to all humanity: here is the true Mes-
sianism of Jesus, which Paul and Peter tore to tat-
ters, each inj his way; and of which each in his way
snatched a shred so that only experiments im-
perfectly realized resulted, and even counter-

*There were two kinds of proselytes, the proselytes of
righteousness who completely accepted the Jewish religion
and the proselytes of the gate, who accepted it only in
part. (Trans.)

THE CATHOLICISM OF ISRAEL 155

feits of the true Messianism. I have spoken with
an open heart to you, disguising nothing of the true
Jewish doctrine, adding nothing to it, holding nothing
back, nor veiling aught of my most sincere and my
oldest convictions."

How could one but revere the sincerity of the
master who, without fear of offending the prejudices
of his own coreligionists, did not cease in all his
writings to return to this Catholic doctrine, assur-
ing to Judaism a place quite apart, among all other
religions? A great Christian with whom I was soon
to enter into relations, was able to write on the day
on which it was given to him to understand: "Elijah
Benamozegh has dealt justly with an error com-
monly made by us Christians; which consists in
not seeing anything in Judaism but a national
monotheism, an ethnic religion. He shows us in the
ancient traditions of Israel the clearest Universalist
aspirations, without any mental reservations, look-
ing toward the subjection of the Gentiles to
Mosaism."

XV
JEWS AND CHRISTIANS

WHO CAN define the place that regrets occupy in
our lives? I do not mean those connected with in-
evitable mourning and the grief which strikes us
down at every loss that we are bound to suffer. I
am thinking of the hours wasted, of the opportuni-
ties lost through our own fault, of possibilities we
have neglected. At our side there was a cherished
human being, whose happiness was in our hands,
and the time to give happiness was limited; we did
not understand all that we ought to do until that
being was taken from us. A way lay open before us
which might make it possible for us to achieve great
things, but misguided at the crossroads, we only
recognized our error at the moment when it was
too late to turn back.

When I reread for the hundredth time today the
fine letter of Benamozegh in the preceding chapter,
it seemed to me that a youthful spirit already wholly
freed from the dogmatism of his childhood, and
eager to consecrate himself to the service of God

156

JEWS AND CHRISTIANS 157

and of humanity, must find in it a purpose that
could arouse his enthusiasm and a program of
activity broad enough to enlist his energies. None-
theless, I repeat, I did not at that moment grasp the
doctrine so simple and true, that the revered master
had explained with so much clarity. Instead of
permitting myself to be won over by the. grandeur
of the ideal and the beauty of his whole thought, I
lingered to discuss details.

I admitted that the Christian might live by the
Gospel, and that the Jew on his side be guided by
the Mosaic Law, but in the position which the rabbi
invited me to occupy, I saw myself placed between
the Law which did not concern me, and the Gospel,
which I no longer accepted as a basis of religion.
I thus found myself without any other support than
a theoretical plan which confused all my earlier con-
ceptions. Benamozegh answered my objections in
the following letter.*

"I come to the questions you put to me on the
subject of the code of Noackism. Know that the
primitive form of all Revelation which continued
even after the introduction of the Mosaic Law, and
which still exists in our own day in the heart of the
Jewish people, the form which biblical teachings

""December 30, 1895. Dictated by the master to his
disciple, Samuele Colombo.

158 THE UNKNOWN SANCTUARY

have long preserved, comes of oral tradition. The
same condition obtained in regard to the first Chris-
tian documents, and it is not surprising that the
Noachic religion found itself in the same position
and that everything connected with it was scattered
through the Old Testament, and in the written
documents where the ideas of tradition were succes-
sively introduced Mishna, Talmud, Midrash, etc.
"You would have experienced serious embar-
rassment if, at the time of the patriarchs, and
even at the period of the prophets, any one had
asked you where the code of religion was then.
Nevertheless, this code existed, and the existence of
a religious law constituting the statute to which the
Gentiles were bound to conform cannot be contested.

"It is thus from the deep source of Hebrew tradi-
tion, placed in these literary monuments, that I have
just named, that one must drink without fear of
ever exhausting it. This is its glory, and this makes
it possible to measure the extent of its mission.

"You are mistaken if you think that the Gentiles
having left the shadows of Paganism at the behest
of the apostles began to return to the God of Noah
and of Abraham with a book in their hands. The
book came much later, as you know. The Gospel
drew its inspiration from tradition, and without
making the pretention of distinguishing between
what belonged to the person of the founder of
Christianity, and what is the work of his disciples,
one has a right to believe that the Gospel did not
exhaust the Noachic Tradition, as Israel possessed
it, and there is no reason to suppose that what was

JEWS AND CHEISTIANS 159

given to the Gentiles was lacking in any way in
fidelity. One must guard against confusing the
Gospel preached by the Apostles, with u.c book of
that name, for the important thing was 1 the Good
News announced by the disciples of Jesus the
book came later."

The master concluded by saying that the true
Hebrew tradition touching the religion of human-
ity, is to be sought for, not in the Christian Church,
as it is, nor in evangelical documents, but only in
the records preserved by Israel looking toward the
spreading of this religion, and also to the main-
tenance of its own particular code.

But though I admitted all this, it did not yet solve
my own difficulties, and it did not give me a clearly
defined religious status. Would I not stand be-
tween the Christians who could no longer under-
stand me, and the Jews, who would also misunder-
stand me? To these fears which I often expressed
the master replied in the same letter with careful
explanations:

"You seem to see the phantom of individualism
rising up against you. Why speak of isolation? I
see all about you an infinite multitude of believers!
I grant you, that the outward signs may not be vis-
ible, but nonetheless, you will truly be of the com-

160 THE UNKNOWN SANCTUARY

munion of the Church of God, the Church of
Abraham, which the Prophets foretold, and which
was, in a smaller or larger measure established in
the world by the work of Christianity, and of Islam,
but above all, you will be in communion with Israel,
which must recognize in you the perfectly legitimate
representative of Noachism, of the true believers of
the future.

"However, if an outward bond be indispensable
to you, if you cannot be content with that which the
Jewish religion offers you, I am greatly mistaken
if you cannot find in the large number of Christian
Churches, a church professing a liberty of faith con-
cerning the Trinity and the Incarnation, that may
be reconcilable with the tradition which is the pro-
totype of Israel. I also believe that concerning the
observance of Mosaism there would be conceded to
the faithful, the right of professing their thoughts
and of practicing all that conscience dictates. Why
should you not become a member of such a
Church?"

But as he realized that this solution could not
meet the difficulties I had revealed to him and those
he believed existed secretly in the depth of my soul,
Benamozegh added, in his own hand, the following
lines:

JEWS AND CHRISTIANS 161

"In the path I have indicated as being the true
way open before you, you will be in intimate com-
munion with Israel, taking part as you, list in its
worship and its ceremonies, and what is more, if
you wish, even without renouncing Jesus. Let us
understand one another well: on condition that you
see in Jesus only a just man, a prophet, only a man,
however lofty you may wish to imagine him. And
it will be the easier for you to reconcile this with
conceptions of Judaism which you well know were
in the teachings of Jesus most sympathetic to the
conservation of Mosaism.

"And who can tell if you are not destined to be-
come the bond of union between Christianity and
Judaism?"

The reader may ask with astonishment, what
could be the reason of the insistence with which
Benamozegh returned to the question of Jesus, who
at no time occupied an important place in the let-
ters I addressed to him. I even believe that I passed
it over in silence, and possibly this very silence
moved the master to express himself clearly on the
subject.

His motive is easy to understand. Informed as
he was on the Christian religion, and not only on
its historic data but on its theology also, he must

162 THE UNKNOWN SANCTUARY

have said to himself that the personality of Jesus
necessarily played a preponderant role in the
thoughts of a Christian by birth, and formed the
crux of the difficulties that he would encounter in
his evolution towards Judaism. His manner of ex-
pression must be astounding to the majority of
Christians. Because of their acceptance of
legends, and their domination by prejudices, they
generally imagine that the heart of the Jew is in-
evitably filled with bitter hatred against the hero of
the Gospel. When some romancer pictures the Jews
of a village lost in the Carpathian mountains, spit-
ting despitefully as they pass by the crucifixes that
extend their great arms of pity over the sad country,
they take the coarseness of the gesture and the im-
precations which accompany it, for the accurate
and traditional expression of the sentiments of the
entire synagogue. The gesture may be authentic and
equally so the childish maledictions. But I dare to
say that nothing of all of this is really meant for the
person of Jesus himself, of whom these shut-in and
ignorant Jews have never known anything. It was
the centuries of persecutions inflicted on their
people in the name of the crucified one, which
evoked against his image this unintelligent and
shocking protest. Can one really refuse to forgive
them when one considers the misery and the sorrows

JEWS AND CHRISTIANS 163

which formed the course of their history because of
the unworthy conduct of the followers of Jesus,
ever forgetful of the most elementary lessons of
the Gospel?

In any case I owe it to the truth to witness to
Christians who will read these lines that I have
known Jews of all types, of every social class, of all
degrees of culture; that generally I met with indiffer-
ence to the name of Jesus, a certain repugnance
toward claiming him as a Jew of the prophetic lin-
eage which would nevertheless be most logical; but
never the feeling of hatred that is attributed to
them, and Benamozegh no doubt deemed it of im-
portance to dispel the common error in this respect.

It is not only the relations between Jews and
Christians which have changed because of the polit-
ical and social transformations that have come about
in all countries, it is also the manner of envisaging
the religious problem from one side and another.
Persons of scientific culture know what to think of
the origins of Christianity. And nothing in the
future can prevent educated Jews from returning to
the truth of history in restoring to Jesus, insofar as
we can know anything certain on the subject, the
place that is due to him in the religious history of
the world and of Judaism in particular, with which

164 THE UNKNOWN SANCTUARY

the rabbi of the sermon on the Mount certainly
never broke at any moment of his life.

Without going as far as certain modern rabbis,*
who are not afraid to give to Jesus, through reac-
tion against the habitual reserve of the synagogue, a
place out of proportion with the lack of certainty
of the Gospel story, Benamozegh, with his indepen-
dence of judgment and his love of truth, did not
hesitate to facilitate comprehension for Christians
of the true Messianism, in showing them in what
measure it could be reconciled with the facts of
their own tradition.

*For example, Rabbi Leonard Levy, of Pittsburgh, Re-
form rabbi of indefatigable religious industry. The ques-
tion of Jesus considered by him "the great Jew" constantly
recurs in his sermons. Equally significant is the work of
Rabbi Enelow, "A Jewish View of Jesus,'' New York, 1920.

XVI
MEETING WITH THE MASTER

THE LETTERS of the Chief Rabbi of Leghorn are
not of those than one forgets after having read them.
They mapped out a veritable program of religious
life, and demanded firm decisions of me. This
correspondence led me to. decide that no duty of
conscience compelled me to leave the Church of my
birth, and that, even to the contrary, accepting the
reservations indicated by the master, I might recon-
cile the outward profession of Catholicism with the
faith of Abraham, of Moses and of the prophets.
Since the Noachism of which Benamozegh wrote
to me had no definite form and possessed no out-
ward organization there was no incongruity in call-
ing it by the name of Christianity, even more logi-
cally by that of Catholicism, which is in more com-
plete accord with the universalism of the prophets,
could I not content myself with a purely moral con-
version without expressing it in any form of religious
practices? I searched in vain through the letters
of Benamozegh for definite counsel in this matter,
but could find none. He reiterated insistently, that

165

166 THE UNKNOWN SANCTUARY

far from finding myself isolated, as I feared, I was
really surrounded by a multitude of believers, be-
longing to the true Church. Was he not alluding to
that great invisible religion, to that soul of the
Church Universal, to which Father Gratry, of noble
heart and high intelligence, consecrated such beau-
tiful pages in his Philosophy of the Credo?

Without barring the possibility of complete con-
version to Judaism in the future, I was inclined to
hold in abeyance for the moment the whole purpose
from which my filial duty bade me refrain. It was
in this spirit that I wrote to the Rabbi of Leghorn,
and I did not conceal from him that no form of
Protestantism, no religious sect, howsoever Unitarian
one might conceive it, could satisfy me, that I felt
an unconquerable repugnance toward accepting such
a solution and that if I left the Church of my birth,
it could only be for the one from which it
sprang.

Under the guidance of the master who sought to
lead me, with unwearying kindness, I devoted my-
self to studying the books which he had suggested,
and which a Frankfurt bookshop procured for me.
The En Yaakob, an Haggadic compilation by Jacob
Ibn Habib, the Menorat ha Maor of Isaac Aboab,
and the Mesillat Yesharim of Moses Haim Luz-
zatto, were the first books which he placed in my

MEETING WITH THE MASTER 167

hands. All the evenings that I had the joy of
spending at our dear fireside I devoted to these
Hebrew books, and I also made a careful study of
the daily ritual, and of the Mahzor* Practical
minded people will say that it would have been
much more useful and more sensible to have dili-
gently examined the compilations of Sirey or of
Dalloz, which would have been more in keeping
with my professional occupation. There is too
much common sense in this observation for me to
wish to contradict it, but I believe that in what
seems folly in the eyes of the world, there is oft-
times a hidden wisdom.

At that time my dear maternal grandmother, who
spent the last years of her life with us, had her usual
place in our quiet evenings. She was of Italian
extraction, and though she had lost her sight, she
retained to the end a charming and lovable gaiety.
Someone said to her one day: "I believe your
grandson is thinking of becoming a priest." Where-
upon she replied cheerily: "To tell you the truth,
he is thinking of becoming a rabbi, but with all
that, you know, he remains unchanged."

I had the most ardent desire to travel to Italy
again, and this time to have an interview with
Benamozegh. As soon as I found it possible to

*Mahzor Prayer book of the festivals.

168 THE UNKNOWN SANCTUARY

carry out this plan I informed the rabbi of my
intended visit to Leghorn.

I went directly to Rome at the beginning of my
vacation. Father Henri had given me a letter of
introduction to the Maestro di camera at the Vati-
can, in order to obtain an audience with the Pope,
although receptions were officially suspended during
the summer months. I had the satisfaction of
knowing that my request was granted, but it was
only after two months of waiting, on the day before
I left for Naples, that the courier of the Vatican
came to bring me the invitation to present myself
on that very day at the Sala Clementina. It was
there that I was to be admitted to see Leo XIII at
the moment of his return from his daily walk in the
gardens. Surrounded by prelates, he appeared in
a sedan-chair which was set down before us. We
were only four visitors, on our knees in that im-
mense room.

I shall never forget the diaphanous hand of that
aged man which was extended to me, or the extraor-
dinary brilliancy of those eyes which were fixed
upon me. I asked the Pope to bless my mother,
that being the chief aim of my visit. "I bless you
with your dear mother," said he to me in French.
"Be a good son and a good Christian." And when
in reply to his question, I told him I had come from

MEETING WITH THE MASTER 169

Lyons he added: "It is one of the cities of Mary,
and is very dear to us." The audience only lasted
a few moments, and the cortege having resumed its
march, disappeared through the opposite doorway,
a white vision which left with me an impression of
serene grandeur.

At Naples I embarked for Palermo, and it was
only during the days that preceded my return from
Italy, after this excursion into Sicily and another
stay in Rome, that I stopped at Leghorn. I was eager
to save my visit to Benamozegh for the end of the
journey, not wishing other memories to lessen the
vividness of this. I also desired to be at Leghorn
for the first day of the Jewish New Year.

I was able to see the rabbi at the great Temple
during the service, and in observing him at the
moment of the sounding of the Shofar* I recalled
the words which I had read in his correspordence
with Luzzatto: "What meaning has this ceremony
for you? You can only give to it one of the puerile
poetic interpretations which were invented outside
of the Cabbala. It is very different for me. Every
note has importance, as every atom of matter is a
mystery; as each body has its place and its value in

*Shofar The ram's horn used in synagogue ritual on
the New Year's Day.

170 THE UNKNOWN SANCTUARY

the whole of creation. For me the Torah* reflects
the universe."

Benamozegh sent me word that he would come to
see me at the Albergo del Giappone, where I was
staying. I must admit that I was surprised and
even disappointed when he arrived. I no longer
saw before me the Cabbalist rabbi in his talith,**
deep in thought as he listened to the strident notes
of the Shofar, but a little old man of hesitating gait,
negligently attired, who humbly introduced him-
self without any attempt at dignity, and seemingly
without any break in the course of his meditations;
for his gaze remained fixed on some inward subject
of concentration. I had just come from seeing Leo
XIII, and it is easy to see that the contrast could
not but seem striking to me. Nevertheless, those
who have read the preceding letters with attention,
will without doubt realize as I did, that the bearing
of their author towards his unknown correspondent
was not without a certain majesty.

"I read your last letter with the greatest of
pleasure," said Benamozegh to me, "for I saw that
the frankness with which I combated certain of
your tendencies, far from being unpleasant to you,

*Torah the basic Law, the Pentateuch.
**Talith Praying shawl, used by Orthodox Jews when
at prayer.

MEETING WITH THE MASTER 171

was welcomed by you, and even bore, if I am not
mistaken, some fruit in the way that I hoped it
would."

However carefully I kept the notes of this con-
versation, which I considered a great event in my
life, I want to put no words in the mouth of
Benamozegh that he did not write and sign with his
own hand. What I have just cited and all those
that remain to be read to the end of this chapter,
constitute the text of a letter that he wrote me to
Lyons, dated July 5th. Little time had then elapsed,
up to my visit to Leghorn, so that this letter may
serve as the exact reproduction of our conversation.

The master spoke slowly and without showing
more curiosity regarding me than if the young man
before him had been one of his regular students.
His words seemed like a lecture, that he was re-
peating to himself, and he only looked at me when
I put a question to him.

"I congratulate myself from the bottom of my
heart," said the master, "on the resolution you
have made, for thus you are sure not to have re-
grets.* Later on, the question will narrow itself
down to a choice for you between the better of

*I > have reason to believe that Benamozegh makes special
allusion here to my complete abandonment of every thought
of the Catholic priesthood.

172 THE UNKNOWN SANCTUARY

two good things. In speaking of your decision I
understand that you exclude any form of Protest-
antism, inasmuch as Protestantism rejects the prin-
ciple of tradition. I, a Rabbinist, an ardent
defender of the Hebrew tradition, can only approve
of this decision on your part. But though this
may be the matter of a word, I must add that the
name Protestant is so elastic and comprises, as you
well know, so many outward varieties, that it is not
astonishing that it should have existed, or that it
might culminate, even through you, in a type of
Protestantism that would represent Noachism in the
clearest way, which is the true religion of the lay-
men of humanity, as the Mosaic statute is the re-
ligion of the priesthood of humanity, Israel."

"Master," I asked, "what advantage do you find
in the solution for which you seem to have so
marked a predilection?"

"I am thinking," replied Benamozegh, "of the
possibility of your feeling it your duty in conscience
to preserve the belief in Jesus, not, be it well under-
stood, as a God-man, but as a just man, and using
his teachings as far as possible, when they do not
contradict true traditional Judaism. I need not
remind you that the violent attacks of Jesus upon
the Pharisees and Pharisaism, which would appear
to oppose my point of view, are, as has been proven,

MEETING WITH THE MASTER 173

leveled at Pharisaic, which our good Pharisees con-
demn and deal with still more severely than did
Jesus."

"Permit me, Master, to define still more clearly
the thought that I have already expressed. The
respective positions of religion today seem to me
to be clearly defined. I see about me Jews, Catholics,
Protestants, but no Noachides. This Noachism
which connotes to me a compromise between Juda-
ism and Christianity, will it not be judged as such
by Christians and by Jews?"

"Pardon me," replied the Master, "but the objec-
tion that you raise against Noachism, that the
respective positions of religion today are clear cut,
and that you can nowhere discover the ben Noah^
this reasoning does not satisfy me. Noachism a com-
promise between Christianity and Judaism? If you
will recall what I said in my Introduction to Israel
and Humanity* you will see that Noachism is the
true, the only eternal religion of the Gentiles, and
that it has its foundation in common with Israel.
It is nothing else than true Christianity, that is,
what Christianity ought to be, what it some day will

*In the beginning of our correspondence Benamozegh
had sent me this brochure, his letters to Luzzatto, his
volume of Theodice Dio and the pamphlets of his Library
of Hebraism.

174 THE UNKNOWN SANCTUARY

become. This, according to the Jews, is the true
religion of the Messianic times."

I replied to Benamozegh, that it did not seem to
me that the Jews had a clear conception of the
Hebraic doctrine relative to this religion for which
they did not seek to recruit adherents. He re-
plied: "Knowing my co-religionists, I know it does
not seem right to them to play the role of cicerone
in the world of the Spirit. They say, we Jews all
are proud of the fundamental principle which is
ours: 'The righteous of all nations shall have a
share in the world to come.' How then could one
imagine for a moment that they would feel the slight-
est repugnance toward him who without being a Jew
nevertheless possesses all that is good in other re-
ligions? And if they are educated Jews, in what
esteem ought they not hold him who is not a Jew
by birth, but is nevertheless exactly that which
Judaism wants him to be, since according to
Judaism the non-Jew ought be of the Noachide re-
ligion?"

"And if I declare to you, Master, that I wish
to embrace this religion, what then do you advise
me?"

"In embracing it you have the choice between
two ways which offer themselves to you. You will
either be content to profess it for yourself in secret,

MEETING WITH THE MASTER 175

leaving to God the care of fructifying the hidden
germ, or you will bravely lift up the ancient stand-
ard, ancient and modern at the same time. And
to prove to you my sincerity, I who, so far as I may,
modestly represent ancient Orthodox Judaism, I
will be with you. Yes, I will publicly recognize the
correctness of the stand you have taken. On one
condition, however, and I hardly need remind you
of it, that I know exactly the credo of your Noach-
ism. It does not necessarily exclude the belief in
Jesus, but you know what place can be given to
him."

"And what is the practical conclusion of your
counsel? I do not speak of my present life but of
the one to which God may call me in the future."

"As a practical conclusion," replied Benamozegh,
"I have already told you what my preference for
you would be. It is not, Heaven preserve me, that
I would absolutely discourage you in a tendency
which would lead you to the Jewish priesthood.
The masters of my masters, Shmaya and Abtalyon,
who were the masters of Hillel and of Shammai,
were proselytes and I ought receive you as they
were received. But two important reasons compel
me to persist in the opinion that I have already
expressed to you. The first is the desire to begin
with you and in you this religious movement which

176 THE UNKNOWN SANCTUARY

will bring about the final evolution of Christianity.
Following that, the profound conviction that I have
that in the new attitude that you would take, you
could be much more helpful to Judaism, than if
you entered into its bosom, yes, much more helpful
from without than from within. But when I say
from without, it is a form of speech; in reality the
layman, the Noachide is not outside of the Church,
he is within the Church, he himself is the true
Church.

"Yes," concluded Benamozegh, "it is through
you that I would begin."

In uttering these words, the master kept his eyes
fixed upon me for the first time, and I was struck
by the peculiar expression of his gaze. It seemed
to say to me: "If you do not understand me you
will lose the decisive moment that will never re-
turn, while if you walk in the way I point out to
you, you will be the man I have been waiting for."

And it is only too true, I have already had oc-
casion to refer to it, that my spirit, shaped by the
dogmatic discipline of Catholicism, could with dif-
ficulty grasp in its magnitude the Jewish doctrine
that Benamozegh put before me. But why should
there be astonishment at the difficulty which I
felt in seeing in Judaism nothing more than a re-
ligion constituted on the same plan as the others,

MEETING WITH THE MASTER 177

when I maintain that so many Israelites by
no less gravely misunderstand the nature of their
own spiritual heritage, the relations of particularism
and of universalism within Judaism, its relation to
the great religions, in a word, the whole of the di-
vine plan?

"At whatever moment you may have need of
my aid," said the master, "do not hesitate to call
on me. There is nothing I will not be ready to do
to help you, and I hope I may succeed." It will
later be seen how this promised assistance was ef-
fectively given to me.

I cannot here reproduce the conclusion of our
conversation, which lasted many hours. It does not
directly bear on the subject of this narrative. I
had the conviction in listening to Benamozegh, that
I was in the presence of a man of God, gleaming,
to use Catholic parlance, with supernatural light.
I make allowance for the quality of his Cabbalism,
which in the eyes of the rationalist of modern
Judaism, is altogether wrong, and ground for sus-
picion and disdain. Far be it from me to think of
limiting by scholastic definitions the great mystery
of divine revelation, and the gift of prophecy. I
simply say that no human being ever spoke to me
as did this rabbi. Those who once in their lives
have had the privilege of meeting a man who lives

178 THE UNKNOWN SANCTUARY

the higher life of the spirit, will understand the
thought of the philosopher Malebranche which I
apply to the Rabbi of Leghorn. "The human soul
may attain to the knowledge of an infinity of beings
and even to the infinite being; it is not within itself
that it perceives them because they are not there,
but in God. Divinity is so closely united to one's
soul by its presence that one can say that soul is
the abode of spirit, as space is the abode of bodies."
Our conversation ended, I accompanied Bena-
mozegh a short distance through the streets of Leg-
horn, then he begged me to leave him. I followed
him with my eyes, while he walked away with slow
steps, absorbed in thoughts which he accompanied
by involuntary gestures. Some passers-by saluted
him respectfully, others looked at him with curiosity
and surprise because of the oddity of his appearance.
This was not my last visit to Leghorn, but it was
our only interview. For those who refuse to con-
sider aught but that which can be> weighed and
measured and counted, this conversation will appear
a very short period of study on the part of a disciple
at the feet of his master. It can possibly be judged
differently if one recall some fugitive moment of
life and all the significance it may have had in our
destiny.
Elijah Benamozegh died at Leghorn on February

MEETING WITH THE MASTER 179

5th, 1900. Two years before his death our corre-
spondence had come to an end. When I learned at
Lyons of the death of the master, I immediately felt
a keen desire to return to Leghorn, to make a
pilgrimage to his tomb. I could not carry out this
plan until August of 1901.

Arrived at Leghorn, I again stopped at the Al-
bergo del Giappone and secured the same room
in which four years before I had received the
rabbi's visit. I did not try to see either the mem-
bers of his family, or his disciple and successor, the
Chief Rabbi Samuele Colombo. I desired to be
alone near the master as at our first meeting. The
morning after my arrival I went to the Hebrew
School and asked for a guide who could accompany
me to the old cemetery where rest, with the ancient
Chachamim* of the community of Leghorn, the
mortal remains of Elijah Benamozegh. There,
among the uniform tombs we had some difficulty
in finding the one I sought. Nothing distinguished
it to the eye of the visitor. I dismissed my young
guide, and beneath the burning sun of Tuscany I
remained for a long time in prayer at the tomb of
the master.

And now I write that which will have no deep
significance except for a very small number of my

*Hebrew title given rabbis among Sephardic Jews.

180 THE UNKNOWN SANCTUARY

readers, for those only who believe in the existence
of invisible forces, in the efficacy of prayer, in mys-
terious influences, profound and decisive, which
come to us from the world into which those have
entered whom we call the dead, but who are in-
finitely more alive than are we: it was from this
hour that I understood Elijah Benamozegh, and the
doctrine he had shown me. From this hour I truly
felt myself his disciple.

XVII
THE CHRISTIAN CRISIS

AFTER this pilgrimage to Leghorn, the thought of
the master seemed admirably clear and logical to
me, and I was aflame with the desire to make it
known to others as it appeared to me. I addressed
myself to the Univers Israelite which the year before
had published my impressions of a visit to the syn-
agogues of Toledo, under the pseudonym of Loetmol,
and I gave a series of articles to that journal which
I called: Elijah Benamozegh and the Solution oj
the Christian Crisis. The title indicates the nature
of my thoughts at that time.

It was the epoch when the Catholic Church, and
all Christianity with it, found themselves shaken by
the modernist movement. My friendly relations
with the members of the small group, called I'&cole
de Lyon, and of which the excellent review of
Pierre Jay Demain was during too short a time the
organ, helped me to understand the new tendencies.

I said in this article, that the different churches
are going through a critical period; there is no
dogma that is not shaken, no belief that is not

181

182 THE UNKNOWN SANCTUARY

doubted; a gust of reform more violent than that
of the sixteenth century blows through the Christian
world. Chr^tians of all communions, orthodox, lib-
erals, and those among them who have ceased to
believe, all of these are made aware of this evident
fact, that all the reforms at present within Chris-
tendom are really tending toward Judaism. The
dogmas which are decidedly crumbling after -having
been considered during the centuries as impregnable
fortresses, without which no Christian faith was
possible, are precisely those which Israel stubbornly
denied for nineteen hundred years. The ideal which
little by little emerges from the haze of dogmatics,
and in which certain spirits, keener than they knew,
saw evidence of the Judaization of the Christian
people, is the ideal of the prophets, and Christianity
tends more and more to transform itself into Mes-
sianism in conformity with the Jewish conception.
Now, be it noted, the two words have exactly the
same meaning with only this difference, that the
first discloses all the Hellenic influence which the
disciples of Jesus underwent, whilst the second
takes them back to pure Hebraic thought.

One would be mistaken in thinking that the pic-
ture I held up only reflected the personal feelings
of a soul detached from Christian dogmatism, and
that I exaggerated the importance of the movement.

THE CHRISTIAN CRISIS 183

An anonymous group of Catholic writers expressed
themselves a few years later, in an Humble Suppli-
cation to His Holiness Pope Pius X, thus:

"The Christian soul has been shaken in its secur-
ity, and doubts having beset it concerning the
solidity of the structure which sheltered its religious
life, it has felt it needful to examine its foundations.
And this not through a spirit of revolt, nor to shake
off the yoke of the faith, but on the contrary, in
order to attain to a faith more beautiful and more
enlightened. This state of mind is widespread: we
have met it in France, in England, in Germany, in
America, in Italy; it wears the priest's cassock, the
lawyer's cloak, the officer's uniform, the working-
man's blouse, the professor's gown; it does not alone
frequent the universities, it lives in the seminaries;
it is not 'modernist,' it is modern, this is incontro-
vertible. Or, rather it is the soul that never dies,
which lives today, which lived yesterday, which will
live tomorrow, which necessarily has always lived,
which lived and will live forever in the life of its
time."*

Face to face with the poignant anxiety of the
Christian soul, I tasted the peace of him, who after

*Ce qu 'on a fait de 1'Eglise, p. xviii, Pari, Alcan, 1912.

184 THE UNKNOWN SANCTUARY

the tempest, has happily entered port. I felt that
I owed to Benamozegh, with the development of
my religious conscience, the possession of a simple
luminous truth, which came to be for me a power
and a sure guide in the chaos of beliefs. I
understood Catholicism henceforth, as I had never
understood it before. I came into possession of the
key to the problem of religions, in their successive
phases, and the conflicts of the hour were no longer
mysterious to me, because I had discovered their
first cause in the very beginnings of Christianity,
separated from the venerable trunk on which it
should harmoniously have continued to grow.

This clear vision of things made it possible for
me to await with confidence the solution of the
future, a solution as certain as were the difficulties
of the moment, for it appeared as the culmination
of a providential plan; the return to the purity of
primitive faith. To a close observer, I said,
everything on the battlefield of ideas, as in outward
events, tends each day to confirm anew this faith
that the philosophy of history reveals to us, that
shows us that the world has a purpose toward which
the eternal wisdom directs it, and this was the faith
of Benamozegh.

I attempted to give a summary as clearly as

THE CHRISTIAN CRISIS 185

possible in this sketch of Benamozegh and the Chris-
tian Crisis, of the ideas developed by the master
in his Introduction to Israel and Humanity and con-
cluded with the following words:

"Let the Israelites lift up their heads and again
become conscious of their holy mission! They have
their word to say in the present situation, the liberat-
ing word. Let us help our brothers, according to
the word of Mazzini 'to turn the new divine page.'
Others will come after Benamozegh, who will draw
from the works of this valiant champion of He-
braism, ideas for new and important works.

"May the Christians understand at last in what
this new revealing of the Revelation must consist,
of which all have a presentiment and which all
would bring about, the preliminary signs of which
may already be discerned in most of their churches,
even in those that seem dedicated by their very
essence to an irremediable crystallization. May
they recognize that the return to Hebraism is the
key to the religious question of the present and of
the future. Debates on this question preoccupied
the first centuries of the Christian Church, and re-
formers of all eras disputed over it, and never
reached a solution, and it is still preplexing those

186 THE UNKNOWN SANCTUARY

souls of our own day, no longer able to believe in
Christianity, and longing still to believe.

"To those who from one side or another, may be
alarmed at the thought of reforms to be achieved,
and of the antiquity of the beliefs to be corrected
or replaced, I answer in the words of the monk
Columban to Pope Gregory the Great, which so
well sums up the whole thought of Benamozegh:

'It is certain that error is ancient, but the truth by
which error is condemned is always more ancient
still.' "

No one among the readers of L'univers Israelite
knew who the author of this sketch on Benamozegh
was, and I remember having had it read in Lyons
without any one suspecting that I had written it.
Of course, I was obliged to guard my anonymity,
faithful in this to the thought of the master, which
I interpreted as considering it my first duty to
cause my mother no new anxiety concerning my
religion. Nevertheless, in the providential nexus of
cause and effect, these articles were to be an abun-
dant source of benediction to me.

The pages that I have just cited came to the
notice of Pere Hyacinthe, who had come from a
winter's sojourn at Rome. He was much impressed
by them and conceived a desire to know the anther.

THE CHRISTIAN CRISIS 187

This was the beginning of the most holy and most
perfect friendship that can exist in this world, the
incomparable delights of which it was given me to
enjoy for nine years. The homage I paid to the
learned man of Israel in writing these articles, in
order to spread his doctrines, were of service to me
also in connection with a great Christian, and in
bringing together two souls, the remembrance of
which is infinitely precious to me.

Benamozegh departed, gave Pere Hyacinthe to
me.

XVIII

P&RE HYACINTHE

THIS GREAT soul never ceased to evolve toward a
truly Catholic conception of religion. The Bible re-
mained his daily food and the monotheistic faith of
Moses and the prophets the very breath of his life.
At the Monastery of the Carmelites his superior had
already said to him: "The Lord has endowed you
for the ministry of the Word, but I have one fault
to find with you, which is that in your sermons you
more often quote the Old Testament than the New."
In one of his lectures at the Cirque d'Hiver, in 1878,
he uttered the following words which indicate the
tendency of his religious views; "If I were to be a
Theist in a vital positive sense, it would not be with
the Idealist philosophers and still less with the
Christian Deists, it would be with the Jews and the
Moslems, two religions sprung not from the brain
of a dreamer, but from the robust loins of the
Semitic patriarchs, the one with Israel, the other
with Ishmael; and rather because the first is above
the second, as is the free woman above' the slave, I
would go to sit in the shade of the synagogue^ French

188

PERE HYACINTHE 189

in nationality, Jew in religion, I would attach my-
self to the theism of Revelation and of miracle, I
would worship with Israel, this God of Moses
greater than the God of Plato."

More recently in a pamphlet dedicated to Max
Nordau, "Who Is the Christ?" he definitely ex-
pressed himself on the subject of the deification of
Jesus:

"Such substitution of a man for God," he wrote,
"is the great sin of Christianity, and it is with just
indignation that we true monotheists repudiate it.
The mistake made by the Church of Rome in pro-
claiming the infallibility of the Pope, is a small thing
by the side of this. Let us hasten to have done
with these two idolatries, but let us begin with the
oldest and the most sinful."

The new vision of Judaism, the doctrine set forth
by Benamozegh, was then well timed to be of deep-
est interest to the great Christian orator. Before
returning to France, he had made a detour to Leg-
horn in order to meet and discuss religious ques-
tions with Rabbi Samuele Colombo, the disciples,
and the son of the great Leghorn sage.

Of the latter he said to them: "My sympathy
for Benamozegh is the more keen, because I find

190 THE UNKNOWN SANCTUARY

my own oldest and most cherished thoughts so ad-
mirably expressed by his pen. I have never ceased
to desire the reconciliation of religion and science, of
Judaism and of Christianity, and I am convinced
that from their union depends in great part the fu-
ture of the world."

Pere Hyacinthe quite naturally expressed his
desire to correspond with the author of the
articles which had revealed the lofty religious per-
sonality of Benamozegh to him, and his interest was
redoubled when he learned that it was not a Jew,
but a Catholic by birth, who was converted to the
doctrines of the Leghorn rabbi. Great was his
surprise when he learned my name, for I was not
unknown to him.

Some years before this time, in the company of one
of my Salvation Army friends, I had called upon
M. and Mme. Loyson, who were then visiting
Lyons. Mme. Loyson, who wore a Bishop's Cross,
received the visitors in the absence of the Father,
with ecclesiastical solemnity. Her poor French,
the English accent exaggeratedly amusing, with
which she enunciated her theological theories, cre-
ated an impression of a fantastic religion from across
the sea, which was probably an element in the lack
of success of the attempted reformation of Pere
Hyacinthe in France. I remember that she

PERE HYACINTHE 191

asked my companion if he believed in the necessity
of baptism. The Salvationist, who by birth was of
the Waldensian Church, did not believe in any kind
of sacrament, and replied to her that no rites had
any binding character for him. Then Mme. Loy-
son arose, with great dignity: "In that case," said
she, "let us stop Here, for we are too far apart to
understand each other." Pere Hyacinthe, who ar-
rived in the meanwhile, detained us with his usual
affability, and we talked with him for a few mo-
ments. At a later time I saw him again alone. Possi-
bly I told him at that time something of my relig-
ious problems. I do not remember this detail, but
in any case he had not forgotten my name, and he
was greatly astonished to hear it mentioned at Leg-
horn in such unexpected circumstances. I received a
letter from Pere Hyacinthe, in which he wrote me
of his visit to the disciples of the Rabbi of Leghorn,
and in which he expressed a keen desire to meet me
as soon as possible. I went to Geneva to see him
in the summer following his return from Italy.

My religious position was to him a cause of pro-
found and endless astonishment. It was without
doubt the first case of the kind which he had come
upon since the beginning of his long career. He
admitted that the crisis in my religious life had
carried me far beyond the point where he himself

192 THE UNKNOWN SANCTUARY

had halted, but it seemed inexplicable to him that,
after having undergone so radical an inward change,
I succeeded in apparently remaining a Catholic.
His spirit haunted by the need of absolute truth
could not be satisfied with half-way measures; he
was bent upon governing all his actions according
to pure logic, and if the rejection of one dogma had
sufficed to take him outside of the Church, it
seemed impossible to him that I could remain within
it, while denying almost all the others. On the
other hand, he was still too much of a Catholic at
heart to think it possible to continue to receive the
sacraments, without that entire belief which they
exact of the faithful.

I had arranged a small manuscript in Latin for
my own use in order to follow the mass, which was
wholly taken from the Missal, only those expres-
sions contradictory to the Jewish faith being omitted,
and I introduced no other changes except those that
placed the eucharistic rites in harmony with my be-
liefs. If the Credo stopped at the first article,
visibUium omnium et invisibilium, on the other
hand, the preface, the Sanctus, the memento of the
living and the dead, the Lord's Prayer remained
almost without abbreviation.

Pere Hyacinthe asked me to lend him this little
book, and in returning it to me, he said: "I under-

PERE HYACINTHE 193

stand you, but I do not envy you." However
everything leads me to believe to the contrary, that
he envied me more than he understood me, for he
suffered over his spiritual isolation, and nothing
would have been more precious to him than to be
able, without strain upon his conscience, to have en-
joyed communion with believing souls. But I had
settled the problem for myself, and strangely, it was
to the advice of a rabbi that I owed that provi-
sional solution which satisfied my filial desire with-
out doing violence to my deepest religious convic-
tions.

My venerated friend had not yet come to under-
stand Judaism as I did, and its dual aspect did not
seem clear to him. How could Christians grasp at
the first, a doctrine that Jews themselves had so
much difficulty in understanding?

M. Loyson wrote to me on March 15, 1905: "I
read with interest everything that comes from Loet-
mol. But will the dry bones pay heed to you?
They are very dry indeed, and as the Vulgate has it
sicca vehementer . Beautiful and simple as the reli-
gion of Israel may be in other ways, it cannot, in its
traditional form, be a solution in the crisis through
which we are passing; first, because it is essen-
tially ethnic, and in ceasing to be that, it would
lose its originality, and would no longer be anything

194 THE UNKNOWN SANCTUARY

more than simple theism; and secondly because its
sacred book, which is ours too, falls, as does the
book that is exclusively our own, under the blows
of that criticism, which will finally destroy that
which refuses to evolve. There is need in Judaism
of an evolution or a new creation at its side, like
that St. Paul wrought for the Nations, minus that
which has vitiated it, the expectation of the imme-
diate end of the world, exclusive salvation through
faith in Jesus and the divinity or quasi divinity of
Jesus. Let us then invoke that spirit without which
the work of the exegetic and historic criticism will
be of no avail. The scholars destroy; only the
spirit of God can create."

But what is this new creation of St. Paul if it is
not in principle the universalistic aspect of Judaism,
that the apostle was mistaken in wishing to make
triumphant through the abolition of the Mosaic
law? As to the part played by this law, Pere
Hyacinthe, remaining more Paulinian than he him-
self believed, retained his doubts:

"The point on which I for my part am not con-
vinced is the perpetuity of the priesthood of Israel,
and of the ethnic law of which it is the guardian.
It seems to me that I* sre is in this a sort of Jewish
ultramontamsm which haughtily isolates itself from
the rest of mankind, with the pretence of subordi-

PEKE HYACINTHE 195

nating it. I would voluntarily say with St. Paul:
There is neither Jew nor Greek, adding in place of
the Messiah Jesus, in God and in Humanity.
Israel ever retains the glory of having preserved for
humanity and transmitted to it, the treasure which
it did not recognize: God, the moral Law, and the
coming Reign of Justice. I would gladly be a
proselyte of the gate, not of the gate of a national
temple, but of the Temple Universal through which
the King of Glory shall come in." (Jan. 13, 1908)

On this point he did not greatly differ with me.
That which he was ever seeking, and at times with
veritable anguish, was the place to be assigned to
Jesus. He saw clearly what it is not, but did not
as clearly see what it is. The question seemed ob-
scure to him, and ins whatsoever way he attempted
to solve it, formidable.

"I gave you all my thought at Lyons," he wrote
me on May 27, 1905. "You have seen how slowly
I progress, and chiefly for two reasons, first in order
to do no hurt to any one by rash words, secondly,
not to be compelled by my conscience to go back-
ward after having gone forward. I have not re-
ceded from the position taken in my pamphlet,
Who is the Christ? because I had thought it over
sufficiently. On the day that I shall see better and
more clearly and surely I shall not hesitate to
say $o."

196 THE UNKNOWN SANCTUARY

And several days later:

"You are in truth a Judaizing Christian in the
serious and practical sense of the word. Wholly
recognizing the Hebrew Church as the Mother-
Church, and while finding fault with Christians for
having made Jesus equal to, and in a sense having
substituted him for the Eternal, I have kept an
attachment profoundly different from yours, for this
same Jesus. Many interrogation points thrust
themselves before my reason in my constant and
solitary reflections, but my soul has not changed,
and what I wrote in that pamphlet I would again
sign today. There are those who have said that
there are contradictions in these pages, as there are
in me. I do not think so, but if that be true, I
reply, that God can unite in a higher synthesis what
seems contradictory in the infirmity of our faculties.
Let us then continue our journey under the eye of
God, which will guide us. Let us help one another
and take each other by the hand, governed by what
he puts into our consciences and into our hearts day
by day."

One cannot but admire the loyalty of this aged
man, who after having left the Church on grounds
seeming to him of first importance, and which I pre-
sented to him as quite secondary, saw himself at the
close of his life obliged to reconstruct the edifice of

PERE HYACINTHE 197

his faith on new foundations. He more clearly de-
fines his thought on Jesus in another letter, dated
January 19, 1908:

"The chief reason why the Jews do not accept
Christianity is that the latter departed from its
origins in creating a God of secondary importance,
as Justin Martyr said. And little by little, after
having made Jesus equal to the Heavenly Father,
have we not practically substituted him for the
Heavenly Father? As to Jesus, there is still a dif-
ference between us concerning him. If I mistake
not, he occupies a minor place for you, and even in
this place is subject to much criticism. For me,
Jesus remains a mystery which I cannot explain to
myself, but he also remains an object of admiration
and of love. I know him by the footprints, incom-
plete though they be, that he has left on history,
and also by the poetic radiance of his person, in the
legends of his birth and of his death. I know him
again by the profound effect that this enigmatic
being has exercised over me, throughout the course
of my life, and above all, since my priesthood. In
order to detach myself from him I must renounce my
very self, and have torn from me a large part, not
only of my feelings, but of my mind, I was almost
about to say my very flesh and blood. This is why
I am a Christian despite the many reservations that

198 THE UNKNOWN SANCTUARY

I make, not only regarding Catholicism, but regard-
ing Christianity itself. If I am mistaken God will
come to the help of my weakness and my integrity.
If Loetmol is right on the subjects on which we
differ, though they do not divide us, he will obtain
for me a ray of the Shekinah. The gods, said the
ancients, give to men only such light as they need
for each day."

Pere Hyacinthe was right in saying that even
this grave question of Jesus on which we differed,
was not of such a nature as to separate us. He felt
himself closer to me than to many others, who hav-
ing developed in another direction, possibly pre-
served ties more real, if not more obvious with
Christianity, but who were in reality much further
away from his substantial beliefs than I was. He
liked my attitude of continued respect for Cath-
olicism. He knew that he could ask me to accom-
pany him to church, in the course of our walks,
where we prayed, united in feeling. Thus there
were bonds between us that were very tender and
very strong.

More than once moreover, at Geneva and at
Nice, he desired to take part with me in the ser-
vices at the synagogue and thus witness to his ven-
eration for the Mother Church, fallen in great part,
but glorious still and rich in memories and in prom-

PERE HYACINTHE 199

ises. "To me it seems a ruin," he said, "and I see
no indication that this ruin is about to be rebuilt.
It is preserved for a purpose that we cannot foresee.
Israel and the Catholic Church are to me the two
great living enigmas."

Chief Rabbi Wertheimer of Geneva, on the Day
of Atonement, in order to do honor to us who were
Gentiles, invited us to take our places beside him
in the sanctuary. Against the scepticism which he
often affected in intimate circles, we occasionally had
to defend the spiritual treasure of Judaism: "Yes,
without doubt," said he to us one day, "we possess
this treasure but it is to Judaism as the winds in
the Aeolian bottles." Pere Hyacinthe, who respected
him, and who had a lofty conception of the position
of a learned man hi Israel, was troubled over the
reputation of a disillusioned rabbi, that Christian
circles of Geneva had given to Dr. Wertheimer.
One day he said to him: "I hear from many sources
that you have no religion, but I always come t^
your defense. Am I right or wrong?" "You are
right, Father," said Rabbi Wertheimer, taking both
his hands, "I believe as you do."

Nothing was more precious to Pere Hyacinthe
than to feel thus united to other souls across the
barriers of creeds, and I succeeded in the last years
of his life in bringing him closer to the soul of
ancient Israel.

XIX
THE MODERNISTS

I PERSUADED Pere Hyacinthe to give a religious ad-
dress at Lyons on his return from the south in
April, 1905.

The pastor, Leopold Monod, placed the Evangeli-
cal Church at our disposal for this purpose, and it
was an occasion for the liberal Catholics to join
with the Protestants around the pulpit occupied by
this great Christian, whose eloquent word has re-
mained unforgettable to all those whose souls were
receptive to its moving power.

It was at the time when the "ficole de Lyon"
was flourishing. Thus was styled a little group of
Catholic modernists, alike active and distinguished,
whose organ was the "Revue Demain," edited by
Pierre Jay, of distinguished religious and literary
standing. M. Leon Chaine, who in the Dreyfus
Affaire had openly taken sides against the reaction-
aries, and whose two works Les Catholiques Fran-
cais et leurs Difficult 6s Actuelles and the Menus
Propos d'un Catholique Liberal, had received de-
served attention, was known as a sympathetic repre-

200

THE MODERNISTS 201

sentative of this group. As a layman he enjoyed
more independence than the churchmen, and it was
he who on the occasion of this visit of Pere Hya-
cinthe gathered about the latter, in his salon, all of
his liberal friends. There were a number of Catholic
priests there, most of the Protestant ministers of
the city, and a number of militants of the modernist
party.

Pere Hyacinthe replied with his usual good grace
to all the questions put to him, and he particularly
dwelt upon the role of Jesus, the place he occupies
in history, and the mystery that still surrounds his
person. He spoke of his heart's devotion to him
whom Christian generations had called the Saviour,
and ended by saying: "After all, perhaps Loetmol
is right." These words were enigmatic to all, ex-
cept to the Abbe Jean de Bonnefoy, who had men-
tioned Loetmol in his audacious little book Vers
I'Unitt de Croyance, and whose gently sceptical
smile greeted the orator's closing words. It seemed
that the ideas set forth by the latter troubled the
Protestants more than they did the Catholics.
"Father," said Pastor ^Eschimann to him in a low
voice, as they walked into the adjoining room for
tea, "surely you at least believe in the absolute
holiness of Jesus?" Pere Hyacinthe, after hesitat-

202 THE UNKNOWN SANCTUARY

ing for some moments replied, "Sir, God alone
is absolutely holy."

It seemed to us, to my friends and to me, that
it was highly desirable that the contact between
adherents of different faiths achieved in the course
of this meeting should be maintained, and we con-
sidered organizing in a permanent way. As for me,
I thought that Christians of different Churches
could not come together without placing themselves,
though unconsciously, on purely Jewish ground, in
accepting the theories on Noachism of Benamozegh,
whose pure and simple doctrines could alone supply
a common platform. It was the altogether apostolic
zeal of a worthy priest of Grenoble, Abbe Samuel,
who encouraged the realization of this plan. For a
long time he had busied himself with the dissenting
Churches, and with practical effort to bring them
back to the Roman Church. The quiet hermitage
in which he lived, above the Isere, where one could
enjoy an admirable view of the Alps, was the con-
stant meeting-place of representatives of all imagin-
able sects. Salvationists, Baptists, Methodists,
Sabbatarians succeeded one another, eager to con-
verse with this priest, who greatly enjoyed hearing
them discuss religious problems, and put to them
insidious theological questions. His soul retained,
as did his blue eyes, the innocence of a child. Firm

THE MODERNISTS 203

in his Catholic faith, he had the great and rare
merit of never doubting the good faith of others.

I also went to visit M. Samuel and introduced to
him the pastor Leopold Monod, ever nobly receptive
to all that could further the union of those of good
will. Both agreed to organize, and to preside over
a small interdenominational gathering, which was
held at Lyons with a certain amount of success,
even tho the reactionary journals accused us the
following day, of shaking the pillars of the Temple.
Nevertheless we succeeded in founding a Society
for Religious Study, bringing together the followers
of different creeds, and the religionists unattached
to any church. These meetings continued with
more or less regularity during two or three years.
A subject, decided upon in advance, was discussed
on each occasion, by a speaker chosen in turn from
the different sects, and there followed general dis-
cussion; an excellent opportunity for all to learn
to know and to respect one another. If an em-
barrassing question to the churchmen present were
raised by some dull-minded person, the pastors
themselves would come to the rescue in order to
sustain their Catholic colleagues. The truly bro-
therly spirit which obtained in these meetings at
the Hotel Bayard, has left blessed memories with all
those who had part in them.

204 THE UNKNOWN SANCTUARY

In truth we were far from the point of depar-
ture of the excellent Abbe Samuel. The flock had
outstripped the shepherd, and leaving him on the
plain, standing still in his simple and outworn
theology, had established itself on the heights. The
existence of our Lyons Association was revealed
to the religious world by divers articles which ap-
peared in the foreign press, and became the oc-
casion of a voluminous correspondence for me, with
Christians of all Churches, notably in Germany
and in England. It was in this way that I entered
into relations with the venerable founder of the
Theistic Church of London, the Rev. Charles Voy-
sey, who greeted my religious evolution with en-
thusiasm. He found therein the substance of that
which had taken him from adherence to the Articles
of Faith of the Anglican Church, to the profession
. of pure prophetic monotheism.

The decrees of Piux X against Modernism put
an end at one and the same time to the activity
of the "ficole de Lyon" and to the efforts at re-
conciliation attempted, with some success, by our
interdenominational association. The Catholic
priests, finding themselves henceforth unable to take
part in the meetings, no longer showed the same
interest, and it was decided to wait the coming
of more auspicious times before resuming them.

THE MODERNISTS 205

In the meanwhile I formed another plan which
met with the full approval of Pere Hyacinthe,
that a letter be addressed to the rabbinate through-
out the world, explaining the position of Christians
by birth, detached from thr dogma of the Churches,
converted to the religion of Moses and the pro-
phets, and asking of the scholars in Israel some
kind of official recognition of their religious status.
This would be, according to my way of
thinking, an official recognition of the position of
the Noachide, to be made by the authorized repre-
sentatives of Judaism.

One could assuredly neither contest the solid
scriptural foundations nor the admirable human
completeness of the doctrine preached by Bena-
mozegh, and defended in his books. Their prac-
tical character and their application to the religious
status of the present time could alone be challenged,
and thus his doctrines would be openly promulgated.
This proclamation would be heard at the hour when
all Christendom was passing through a serious crisis,
and when the Modernists, through the pen of Fath-
er Tyrell, had just proposed to the Roman authority,
as the only basis on which it could henceforth exer-
cise a spiritual influence over the development of the
human spirit, unity in that which is essential, lib-
erty in that which is not essential, and charity

206 THN UNKNOWN SANCTUARY

in all things. On the unity in what is essential,
the Mother-Church, guardian of biblical Revela-
tion, had a word to say, advice to give. But in
order that the call should be heard, and be presented
in all its importance, it seemed to me indispensable
that it should be signed by Pere Hyacinthe. It
would have been at the same time, the crowning
of the religious development of that great soul,
which had not ceased, in the course of the last years,
to come closer to the religion of Jesus, not the
religion which he was supposed to have created,
for Pere Hyacinthe now recognized that Jesus had
never created a new religion, but only followed the
religion which he had professed all his life.

Nevertheless my venerated friend, who keenly
desired the letter to appear, hesitated to sign it.
He wrote me on May 27, 1905:

"You have every qualification to write it, in
giving to it entirely and loyally the form which
your illustrious master would have given it, since
Benamozegh kept you away from ethnic and priest-
ly Judaism in order to make of you a monotheistic
and in a sense a Christian Gentile. Your letter
might be preceded by an introduction signed with
my name, in which without accepting all your
views, I would say how much closer I have come

THE MODERNISTS 207

to them in these last years, and I would indicate
what the views of many Christians are. Thus
our two testimonies, with certain differences, would
support each other and would become one. If
all the same, after having prayed and reflected,
you remain convinced that I should write this
letter, I might decide to do it myself, so important
does the thing seem to me, and publish it under
my name, but it would not be a veritable Noach-
ide manifesto, as it would be if written by you."

What restrained Pere Hyacinthe was the ques-
tion of Jesus. His son pressed him in his way to
free himself from the bonds of historic Christian-
ity. He said to him, speaking of me:* "His
letter is very remarkable . . . Notice that he
tells you exactly what in my frenzy I urged in
these last days: that Christians, even the best and
the broadest, are now destroying the cause of re-
ligion by their very fidelity to the letter of their
faith." It is none the less true that my plan might
seem in the eyes of the public a formal disavowal
of Christianity, and was of a nature to rouse the
scruples of a soul which continued piously each

*Citation from a letter from Pere Hyacinthe.

208 THE UNKNOWN SANCTUARY

year to celebrate the anniversary of his priest-
hood.*

The fear of seeming to abandon, not the Christian
dogma he had in fact rejected it, and his Chris-
tianity was nothing more than a "form and a
phase of eternal monotheism" but the person of
Jesus himself, was for Pere Hyacinthe a serious
obstacle to the honest setting-forth of the religious
problem in the form of a manifesto to the rabbi-
nate, at least in the form that I had conceived it.

The plan was not carried out, and if it is to
be regretted, one must imagine there would have
been good-will on the part of the wise men in
Israel, to respond to this Christian appeal, and an
impressive unanimity in that reply. But today I
do riot think one can be quite certain of either
the one or the other, if one were to judge by the
restraint, most praiseworthy in itself, with which
official Judaism expresses itself on the origins of
Christianity, and on the respective positions of
the two religions. This fact can only heighten the
merit of Benamozegh in the eyes of all men, for
on these delicate questions he had the rare courage

*I have just celebrated the anniversary of my priestly
ordination (June 14, 1905). I disavow all the errors which
may attach to it, but I know and I feel that on that day
something great and divine came into my soul which re-
mains there and will remain there. (June 15, 1905).

THE MODERNISTS 209

to speak to Jews and to Christians with a frank-
ness, to which men of religion of the future will
pay greater homage than do his contemporaries.

A movement which arose at this time in Paris
Jewry, with which Pere Hyacinthe was more closely
connected than I was, began to occupy our thoughts.
Beginning in 1899 Pere Hyacinthe had spoken on
several occasions to a small company of Jews, who
felt the need, many of them quite vaguely, of a
religious renascence. Pastor Charles Wagner ex-
ercised a certain influence upon them. It appeared,
from the letters of my venerated friend, that differ-
ent tendencies of most unequal religious value came
to light, and if he were ready to encourage some
of these, he was far from being willing to encourage
others. It was in thinking of those sincere souls,
really desirous of making an effort to win the
younger generation from an increasing materialism,
that he said to me on Dec. 5, 1907: "Be not un-
just to the Modernists of Israel, as the Pope has
been towards those of Christendom. There are in
both, true ideas and legitimate aspirations, to which
the errors of some amongst them should not close
our eyes."

But, on the other hand, he had too keen a sense
of tradition not to condemn the subversive ideas
that were being expressed at this time: "This is

210 THE UNKNOWN SANCTUARY

a new religion and at the same time a hybrid re-
ligion. The distinction between Jew and Greek
once abolished, circumcision and the Mosaic Law
put aside, and replaced by abstract or agricultural
festivals of the type of those of the French Revolu-
tion, or of certain cults of nature, it is no longer
the alliance made with the Fathers and renewed
by the prophets. ft is a vague and superficial
deity that will satisfy and exalt no one, and that
will not give rise to high and holy enthusiasms."

At another time he wrote: "Oh! remain in the
mystery of your ancient synagogue, and if perhaps
it is without hope of conquering the world of to-
day, it has none the less sure promises of the world
eternal, where God's elect will take their places
with Abraham, Isaac and Jacob in the kingdom
of heaven."

I ought to say that at that time my knowledge
of Judaism was chiefly doctrinal and historic, thus
in a sense theoretic. Benamozegh had given me
a lofty conception of it, which had truly admitted
me into an unknown sanctuary, glimpsed in the
days of my youth, and my soul was gladdened by
the consciousness of perfect communion with the
past which Pere Hyacinthe so eloquently inter-
preted. I had had the privilege of which I now
understand all the significance, of seeing Judaism

THE MODERNISTS 211

live through the last representatives of a generation
of believers who have disappeared in our day. I
thought in my faith as a proselyte, that figures
such as Simon Levy were to be found everywhere,
and that the prophetic spirit of the Leghorn savant
animated the soul of every rabbi. I could not
conceive to what a degree the ignorance of Hebrew
had become general, and how very much family
observances were abandoned. It would have
seemed to me contrary to all probability if any
one had informed me that synagogue worship, for
a great number of modern Israelites, is no longer
anything but a collective routine, devoid of every
spiritual element, and that the youth were growing
up in complete detachment from Jewish traditions.

I was then quite naturally impelled to condemn
the innovating tendencies which I could not justify
by a correct understanding of present facts. Lib-
eral, in the matter of biblical exegesis, like my
friends of the "School of Lyons," I was conserva-
tive toward all that concerns traditional worship.

Then, too, there was the spirit of my master, which
at times was surprisingly audacious in the domain
of theology, but which ever remained a militant
defender of true Jewish Orthodoxy. The long
discussions in which Pdre Hyacinthe had taken
part, looking toward a reform movement in

212 , THE UNKNOWN SANCTUARY

k , , *
Paris Jewry, 'finally culminated in the founding

of a small distinct group under the name of Union
Liberate Israelite. On the day after the inaugura-
tion of its house of prayer, I published a series of
articles in the Unwers Israelite, under the title, Let-
tre d'un Chretien d un Israelite sur la Reform Cut-
turelle. It was friendly in spirit and most measured
in form, but I ardently defended the rights of tradi-
tion against unconsidered innovations. Aside from
the question of the Sabbath, I did not touch upon the
most serious questions, I mean those which later
were to be the most important in the task of recon-
ciliation. I did not feel competent to do this, and I
contented myself in establishing, according to my
personal experience, a comparison between differ-
ent religions, in order to throw light upon the spe-
cial psychology of Judaism, which one must be care-
ful not to alter by borrowing from other cults.

The conclusion that may be drawn from an
intelligent and conscientious comparison of differ-
ent religions, seems to me still to have a convincing
power, outside of all question of principles. It
should suffice, for example, that the Apostle Paul
introduced certain customs into the primitive
Church as a sign of rupture with Judaism, and of
liberation from the yoke of the Law, which was

THE MODERNISTS 213

" .

enough in the eyes of the Israelite to give a special
value to the reverse practices.

These articles, which were much liked in con-
servative circles, without alienating from me the
sympathies of liberals, are still of a kind that I
would sign today without changing them in any
way, because they are in agreement with a vision
of Judaism which some later observations have in
no wise changed.

XX

OCTOBER, 1908

NEVERTHELESS my life continued peacefully at the
side of my dearly loved mother. I spent my eve-
nings with her, usually absorbed by the study of
Hebrew texts, which did not seem to surprise her,
and she never put the slightest question to me that
could have forced upon me the cruel alternative of
disguising the truth, or of inflicting pain upon her.
She was content to see me take part in the services
of our parish, and to receive communion in her
company on important holidays.

The reading of various works inspired by the
modernist movement, the visits of my liberal friends,
the reunions of our interdenominational association
for religious studies, which she gladly attended as
often as her precarious health allowed, had given
a breadth to her Catholicism that singularly quick-
ened the character of her personal piety. We read
the most inspiring books together. Saint Augustine
and Pascal were our favorites, and I still possess
precious remembrances of those happy years, those
note books in which my mother copied out with

214

OCTOBER, 1908 215

her own hand the passages of mystic writers which
we had chosen as themes for our meditations.

When I entered into discussion with the heirs of
Benamozegh regarding the work of revision, pre-
paratory to the publication of the master's book,
"Israel and Humanity," she was interested in the
project, and made no objection when she saw me
undertake the burdensome task, excepting insofar
as the physical fatigue might be hurtful to me. In
her letters written during my vacation of 1908, she
wrote me concerning my work on the Italian
manuscript as an important undertaking for me,
without evincing the slightest religious concern, but
I do not believe that she ever yielded to the curiosity
of reading a single one of the pamphlets which were
heaped on my work-table.

Alas! the hour of grievous parting was approach-
ing. My mother had once said to me on a day of
communion: "I asked of God this morning one
earthly favor; that He grant me another ten years
of life, not more, for I think that after that period
my work at your side will have been accomplished."
The ten years had passed, and on several occasions
she spoke to me in the very words of Monica, the
saintly mother of Augustine: "My son, I confess to
thee, as far as I am concerned, nothing in this life
continues to hold me, and I know not what to do

216 THE UNKNOWN SANCTUARY

here, nor why I remain here any longer." These
letters of August, 1908, which my mother sent me
while, according to my custom, I was travelling in
Italy, tender and spiritual as always, contained un-
mistakable allusions to her approaching end. Some
sentences of the last one which reached me before
my return from my vacation, were to me like a
last farewell, when I reread them through my tears
after she had left this world.

I brought my mother back from the country
early in September, and she was confined to her
bed a few days thereafter. Her condition, however,
neither alarmed me nor the doctor seriously. I was
terrified when she asked for the last sacrament, but
in order to allay my fears, she told me that she
had always believed in the efficacy of extreme unc-
tion as a sacrament for the sick, and that after all,
if it were God's will she would gladly make the
sacrifice of living a little longer for love of me. This
was, however, only a pious pretence. She felt her
strength rapidly declining, and spoke of it to those
who visited her, requesting them to say nothing to
me that would distress me. Thus she lived on
about ten days, though constantly preoccupied in
concealing the gravity of her condition from me. It
was not until October 4th that I became conscious

OCTOBER, 1908 217

of imminent danger. It was the eve of the Day of
Atonement.

Since that first Day of Atonement which saw me
as a youth entering the synagogue in a spirit of
curiosity I never failed to attend the Kol Nidre
service. For the first time, and in what agonizing
circumstances, I was not to take part in that solemn
prayer, from which I drew strength to sustain me
during the rest of the year. But before night-fall,
while I was at my dear patient's bedside in com-
pany of the Sister who took care of her, my mother,
who had hardly spoken during the entire day, turn-
ing suddenly to me, said sweetly: "Thou shouldst go
out this evening, my son, do go." I write down this
impressive fact as it happened. One may see in it
a simple coincidence, but possibly also a mysterious
intuition of the dying. I was as one rooted to the
spot, so great was my amazement. The thought
that my mother had read my mind, that she had
penetrated my thoughts to their most secret depths,
and in that hour had received from God a vision
lofty and pure enough to understand the beliefs of
her son, to accept them, and to bless them this
thought gripped me as thrilling evidence. I pro-
tested that I did not want to leave my dearly loved
patient, and that I would not leave the house, but
she insisted, repeating authoritatively: "Thou must

218 THE UNKNOWN SANCTUARY

go I" evincing so great a desire to have me go, that
the Sister herself begged me to defer to her wish,

I went to the synagogue, arriving before the ser-
vice began, In what a state of mind I took part in
this service, in this same place, where long ago I
had had my first revelation of ancient Judaism! In
compelling myself to follow the prayers of the ritual,
I could not restrain my tears, and yet through the
intense emotion which seemed to choke me, there
was ineffable peace, because I felt the conviction
of having been faithful to the light of God, and of
thus finding myself united with my dying mother,
by ties stronger and surer than all outward cere-
monies.

I hastened to return to my patient, and it seemed
that a noticeable improvement of her condition had
occurred during my absence, so much so, that to-
ward midnight the Sister advised me to take some
rest. But only an hour had elapsed, when she came
to call me saying that my mother was very ill, and
that it seemed that her last moment was drawing
near. I held my dear dying mother in my arms
and I prayed with her. For the religious soul, at
such moments, there is a power that triumphs over
human nature, and is surely not of this world. Pain
is not vanquished, Oh no! It is not stifled under
the impenetrable mask of stoicism; it is transfigured

OCTOBER, 1908 219

and finds within itself the secret sources of peace.
Through my tears I kept repeating to my mother:
"God loves theel" and the motion of her hands
which were growing cold, convinced me that she was
conscious of my faith. "Thou art giving thyself
needless trouble," she murmured, as I sought
to alleviate the suffering of her poor body. These
were her last words in perfect conformity with her
whole life, all self-abnegation. She sweetly breathed
her last on the morning of the Day of Atonement.

I closed her eyes, and wished to perform all the
religious rites myself that the dead require in a
Christian home. Within me at that moment there
was the conflict of feelings that Augustine describes
in the same unhappy hour. What was tender in
him and belonged to his childhood went out in tears,
and then was suppressed by a sterner power. I can
attest that in those hours of suffering, I was sus-
tained by the consciousness of a spiritual presence,
of an invisible aid, more real than any visible help,
a certainty of immortality, the deep reality of which
the passing of time has not changed.

The funeral of my mother was attended by groups
of friends of every denomination in that Church of
St. Pothinus which once witnessed the first appear-
ance of Pere Hyacinthe as orator of the Catholic
pulpit. For some days the good Abbe Samuel com-

220 THE UNKNOWN SANCTUARY

forted my mourning in his peaceful hermitage of
Grenoble, then another of my friends, Pastor
Bourdery, gave me in turn in his modest presbytery
at Nantes, the solace of his calm faith and of his
brotherly affection.

XXI

ISRAEL AND HUMANITY

''You will have to make serious decisions." Thus
did Pere Hyacinthe express himself in one of the
first letters that he wrote to me after the death of
my mother. In this way he alluded to his friend-
ship for me and his interest in my future. He be-
lieved the hour had come for me to consecrate my-
self to religious work, and that I could only do this
successfully in the way in which, for so long a time,
I had felt the call. Not that he. ever advised me to
undergo a complete conversion to ethnic and priestly
Judaism, but in my particular case the reasons of
sentiment, which had held me back up to this time,
no longer existing, a definite step no doubt seemed
to him more religious, and in any case more logical
than my course had been during these last years.

On the other hand, a new question arose for me,
and I was compelled to reach a decision. The lead-
ers of the group of liberal Israelites of Paris had
made an offer to me which would give me the op-
portunity for spiritual activity in their midst, and
through it give expression to my own ideals. This

221

222 THE UNKNOWN SANCTUARY

offer was made under the most generous and kindest
conditions, without exacting from me any modifica-
tions whatever of my religious attitude. I had af-
firmed anew, that I felt myself attached to integral
Judaism, its writings and its tradition, that this
Judaism truly allowed sufficient freedom of thought,
but that this very liberty rendered all the more
necessary a fidelity to the forms with which it had
been historically invested, and without which its
organic unity could not be maintained. One could
not, therefore, have expected to see me deflect from
this Judaism those Israelites who, by obligation of
birth, ought to draw from it their way of life. The
replies that came to me from Paris following my
statement of principles, respected my point of view,
and were couched in such terms that Pere Hyacinthe,
in his letters, stressed all the nobility of the pro-
cedure concerning me: "The offers made to you are
as liberal and as brotherly as one could desire, and
if you do not accept them, it is possible that an un-
reasoned instinct of the soul, without being unrea-
sonable, warns you that you are not destined for
this indefinite and uncertain work."

But to the contrary, it was only too evident that
the friendly attitude toward me rested, without a
doubt, upon different conceptions of Judaism from
my own, and what proved this to be true was the

ISRAEL AND HUMANITY 223

suggestion that after a certain time spent in a Rab-
binic School, in another country, I could return
with a rabbinic diploma, permitting me to use the
title and to occupy the position of rabbi. But this
implied that the fundamental question, much the
most important in my judgment, was settled, This
was to know if I ought to continue in the line of
conduct that Benamozegh advised, or to choose an-
other way. The result of the inquiries which I
then undertook is too characteristic of the general
spirit of Judaism, on this most important point, to
permit me to pass over it in silence.

I had seen Chief Rabbi Alfred Levy two or
three times, and one day in the company of Pere
Hyacinthe. He spoke categorically, recommending
to me as the wisest course the religious position
taken by the Leghorn master, and I decided it would
be useless to question him again on this subject.
On the other hand, I did not fail to write to
Chief Rabbi Samuele Colombo, disciple and suc-
cessor of Benamozegh in Leghorn, a man of God,
who united modesty with knowledge, as did the
true sages of Talmudic antiquity, entering into the
minutest details concerning the suggestions which
came to me from Paris. He wrote me on the 8th of
February, 1909:

224 THE UNKNOWN SANCTUARY

"What would Benamozegh think at the present
time? To this question I think I can reply with my
soul and my conscience, that the great and venerated
master would have been as firm now as before, as
I am, in the conviction that you can render the
greatest and the most considerable service to the
cause of Israel in not embracing its priestly law,
but in holding yourself so to speak, outside, and
above any particular church, which you could not
do, once subject to the Law. It is quite true that
you could thus give to your religious activity what-
soever form seemed best to you, precisely because
you would find yourself in an entirely different
position from that of the Israelite by birth. Where-
soever you may continue to think, to preach, to
work, expressing your own aspirations and your
most sacred convictions, without ever imposing si-
lence on your beliefs, you will feel at home, and you
may recognize this liberty to be a providential thing
which you will make use of for the good of the holy
religion.

"May I take the liberty to express to you an al-
together personal opinion, perhaps mistaken, but
that I believe to be right? I would say to you,
that according to my thinking, if the most brilliant
pulpit were open to you as rabbi, and you were
prepared to occupy it, in conforming to the multi-

ISRAEL AND HUMANITY 225

plicity of obligations inherent in such a charge, you
would not be able to do as much good, as if, re-
solved as you are to serve Judaism, you retained
your entire independence. Dear Brother, for you
are that to me in the full sense of the word, brother
in humanity and in faith, brother in heart and in
thought, I am conscious of the unusual importance
of the words that I address to you, in advising you
not to abandon the path pointed out to you by our
revered master, and in doing this I believe I re-
main a humble witness to truth."

About this time a friend in Palestine, with
whom I had corresponded for some years in order
to study modern Hebrew, consented to put the
same question to the Chief Rabbi (Askenazi)* of
Jerusalem, for me, as I had put to Dr. Samuele
Colombo. He received the identical answer in sub-
stance, with a casuistic disquisition on the place
that I could occupy in the synagogue, on the way I
was to comport myself, even as to how to wear the
talith, and to practice the Jewish rites as I thought
best, as an expression of personal and supereroga-
tory piety, and not as obligatory precepts. All
of this corroborating the advice I had previously
received from Benamozegh, proved that the latter

*Jews of German-speaking lands.

226 THE UNKNOWN SANCTUARY

had not given me a purely personal doctrine un-
founded on tradition.

From another correspondent in Germany, I re-
ceived a third reply. It came from Dr. Jacob,
Rabbi of Dortmund, it was written in sprightly
but trenchant style, and it seems worthwhile to
translate its most important passages.

"As to your friend who has been advised if he
would serve the cause of Israel that he eventually
become a rabbi, this is, of all ways, the least
effective. We would have one Jew and one rabbi
the more! A great thing! At the best, as a pro-
selyte he could for the moment count on some
curiosity. For him Christians would no longer
exist, but would Jews exist to any greater extent?
One more rabbi coming to join the little phalanx
of those who, here and there, preach to a dozen
Israelites on the superiority of Judaism and its
Universal Mission, without ever having, note it
well, converted a single soul to their doctrines!"

With the same frankness the distinguished rabbi
continued concerning the proposals from the liberal
group of Paris to me; severe comments, which prob-
ably justified the observations he had made on
this subject in his own country, but which in no

ISRAEL AND HUMANITY 227

way corresponded to facts, as far as they con-
cerned the chief promoters of the Paris movement,
whose religious enthusiasm was indubitable.

"The essence of Neo- Judaism," he said, "if one
does not wish to disguise the truth by phrases,
is not, as far as religion is concerned, to desire
the most and the best, it is to desire the least.
Yes, less of religion and less of Judaism, and even
clothing the little that remains in as Christian a
garb as possible. Show me those who go over
to this kind of Judaism, because of religious motives
and not for contrary reasons! To them true re-
ligious questions! are indifferent. What they desire
is a religion that shall hamper them as little as
possible. They will gladly answer as did the negro
of whom a missionary asked whether the Christians
or the Moslems seemed to possess the better re-
ligion: ( Me eat all.' In truth, how can a man
like your friend, who renounces the world for the
love of religion, turn to those who abandon religion
for love of the world?"

The rabbi concluded by saying: "This is my
advice to your friend: Er stehe zwiscken Juden-
tum und Christentum, let him remain between
Judaism and Christianity, let him deepen with all
his strength and with all his soul the truths of

228 THE UNKNOWN SANCTUARY

Judaism, chiefly those of the Bible, and let him
preach by his pen and his word, as a liberal writer
and a liberal speaker. Let him do exactly the
contrary to what St. Paul did, in inviting the nations
of the earth to come to the God of Israel."

The contrary attitude to that of St. Paul, who,
a Jew, preached to his brothers and to the Gentiles
the abolition of the Jewish Law, was it not to preach
to the Jew obedience to it, while avoiding sub-
mission to it oneself, in order not to give the false
impression that in the divine economy this law
is necessary to the salvation of the non-Jew?

These witnesses, coming from such very dif-
ferent sources and from equally different person-
alities, present nevertheless, as is clearly percep-
tible, an impressive unanimity. Pere Hyacinthe, who
was deeply interested in this inquiry, was much
impressed by its results, and remained as I did
of the opinion that it would be lacking in wisdom
to ignore them, by taking a contrary position.

I continued my laborious work on the manuscript
of Israel and Humanity, in alternating enthusiasm
and discouragement, so great were the difficulties
connected with it. It was at Algiers in the be-
ginning of 1911, that I began to foresee its com-
pletion, and it was finished in the Autumn of that

ISRAEL AND HUMANITY 229

year. At that time I was in Paris near my vener-
ated friend, who was asked to write the preface
to this work. He hesitated for a long time to do
this, not that he did not wish to respond to the
request, but the matter seemed to him of such great
importance that he feared, as usual, not to have
given it sufficient thought. Nevertheless, in the
course of the daily visits I paid him in his peaceful
room in the Rue du Bac, the rough draft of this
preface was written out.

In it, Pere Hyacinthe expresses his satisfaction
in seeing that Israel, which too long had been silent
on the question of Christian sources, had at last
made its voice heard, "for how can we understand
Christianity, if Judaism, the religion whence it
issued, is misunderstood? It is too often for-
gotten that Jesus was a Jew. Whether one wishes
to acknowledge it or not, one cannot change that
fact. The Israelites are our fathers in the faith; it
is to them that we owe the inestimable gift of the
belief in one God. They, however, to-day owe us
the explanation of their protests against our inter-
pretation of the role and the teachings of Jesus."

He seemed to foresee the works of modern crit-
icism which tend to deny the historic existence of
Jesus, and he equally foresaw the possibility of

230 THE UNKNOWN SANCTUARY

saving, even with this hypothesis, the best part
of Christianity, in carrying back, to the oldest
Hebrew tradition, as did Benamozegh, the founda-
tions of the Christian religion, which appears as an
attempted and partial realization of the Messianism
of Israel.

"How Christianity thus conceived, can still be
allied with the personality of Jesus, is a question
that each individual must reverently determine for
himself, but its solution no longer directly affects
Messianism in its historic evolution. However rad-
ical scientific criticism may then be, in its study
of Christian origins, of the character and the role
of Jesus, Christianity no longer remains a finished,
perfect, definite religion, because divinely revealed
in all its parts, but a beginning of the realization
of a plan which existed long before the coming
of Jesus."

He concluded by saying that "all that is best
in the Christian religion, the faith in the Father-
hood of God, in the regeneration of humanity, in
the triumph of peace, of justice, of universal broth-
erhood, all these gifts which certainly do
not come to us from Greek or Roman paganism,
but incontrovertibly from tradition, from the He-

ISRAEL AND HUMANITY 231

brew inheritance, stand and can still legitimately
call themselves the religion of Jesus, for we know
that he had, and could have had no other re-
ligion. It is an historic fact, we know that he
instituted no rite, no sacrament, no Church. Born
a Jew, he wished to live and to die a Jew, and
from the swaddling clothes of circumcision to the
embalmed shroud of sepulchre, followed only the
rites of his nation."

Pere Hyacinthe, the confidant of my religious
thoughts, did not live long enough to see in what
paths Providence would call me to walk. God had
received his soul in his eternal home, four years
before I found myself able to be actively occupied
in the heart of Judaism. The ways of God seem,
in everything that happened to me, much more won-
drous than I can explain, or than my readers for
the most part are prepared to hear me relate.

Israel is a living marvel, since its earliest his-
tory to its present renascence on the old biblical
soil, the development of which is full of promise,
and which we welcome with enthusiasm. Every-
thing connected with it baffles human understanding.

In the heart of this everlasting miracle, which
is the providential preservation of the Jewish people,
a host of smaller miracles without end have come

232 THE UNKNOWN SANCTUARY

to pass in the course of the centuries, a cause of
delight to the believer, of astonishment to the his-
torian. My own life in turn is one of these mir-
acles. It can hardly be of importance, I know,
in the eyes of others, but no one will be surprised
that it is so in my own eyes. In this as in all
other miracles, the instrument is nothing, the will
of the sovereign Master is all. Perhaps it will
not have been in vain to relate it, and to say for
my small part, in the words of Isaiah: "Behold
how I was placed as a sign and wonder in Israel
from the Lord of Hosts, who dwelleth in Mount
Zion."

XXII

CONCLUSION

HERE MY story ends. What follows will no longer be
the history of the Unknown Sanctuary, but that of
the Servants of the Sanctuary. After having retraced
my steps towards Judaism, I ought to explain how I
observed Jews interpret it and live it. But this will
be the subject of another book which may command
some interest. It may be that I shall write it some
day, but the hour for that has not yet come.

If, in conclusion, I am expected to make a con-
fession of my faith, I will only add:

In the heart of the Jewish people the working
of the spirit of God, difficult, laborious, but never
ending, culminated in the historic phenomenon of
Prophetism, unique in the religious annals of hu-
manity, the great miracle of the history of Israel,
and like unto a glorious flower into which its
national genius blossomed. In the prophets the
development of religious thought attained its cul-
mination. Adonai, the God of Israel, revealed him-
self to them as the one God, father of all men.
Humanity being then conceived of as a great fam-

233

234 THE UNKNOWN SANCTUARY

ily, the Jewish faith finally cast aside all national
boundaries, or rather, in respecting them, it sur-
mounted them and surpassed them; it no longer
knew limitation, either of time or of space; it sum-
marized in the Messianic hope its highest, its most
universal aspirations.

But it is not only because of its extent that the
Jewish religion takes its place in the first rank
of the religious beliefs of humankind, it is because
of its essence and its depth. Adonai revealing
himself as the God of holiness, it is in the secret
conscience that religion henceforth finds its purest
and completest expression. All the elements of
morality scattered in other cults, find themselves
united here as in a sheaf. "Ye shall be holy, for
I the Lord your God am Holy": this precept, which
includes all the others, is at one and the same time
for Judaism a religion and a rule of life.

Without denying the value and the influence of
other religions, I believe that it is easy to demon-
strate that the influence of Israel occupies a place
apart in the history of humanity, that between
it and other religions there is not only a difference
in degree, but a difference in kind. In reasoning
thus I do not separate Judaism from its great
branches, Christianity and Islam, which have spread
over the earth, everywhere carrying the knowledge

CONCLUSION 235

of the one God, the God of Moses, and of the
prophets. These, the theologians of the synagogue
point out to us, are two powerful means that divine
Providence has used to carry to the pagan nations
the benefits of the Hebraic Revelation in order to

prepare them for the coming of the Messianic times.
*******

But from the Christian side it will be asked of
me: Would the development of divine revelation
which is manifested in all phases of Jewish history
up to the close of the Biblical canon, not have con-
tinued, attaining perfection still unknown to Hebrew
writings, in those two powerful branches whose vi-
tality is only explained by the presence in them
of the life-giving sap that they received from the
old trunk of Israel?

It seems to me that two facts claim our atten-
tion; in the first place that all of the divine truths
which sustain the soul of Christendom and of
Islam are Jewish truths, so much so that not one
could be cited that Judaism does not possess and
that is not borrowed from it. I concede that some
of these truths have been better understood and
put to better use by Christianity, than by the Jew-
ish people in its entirety, but that is another ques-
tion. In the second place, there is no doubt that
the two great religions, daughters of Hebraism,

236 THE UNKNOWN SANCTUARY

have misinterpreted many important Jewish truths,
and have appropriated others which they have over-
laid by strange additions, constituting alteration
but not enrichment.

For example, who can but see that Yom Kippur
(Day of Atonement) and Good Friday proclaim
the same truth, a truth that may seem but folly
to the human reason in implying that the past can
be effaced, that the infinite Mercy annihilates sin
in the soul that repents, and places within it the
germ of a new life that may express itself in acts
of justice and of holiness? But if the effect of
this doctrine of regeneration and of salvation
through the profession of a particular creed and
through the acceptance of certain historic or so-
called historic facts, be subordinated to the obli-
gatory carrying out of certain rites, is it not evident
that the Revelation which Hebraism has given to
us concerning the relations between the human soul
and God its Heavenly Father is thereby altered
and narrowed?

Let us not forget that while facing the fact of
Judeo-Christianity, there is another fact which
we must face: it is the existence of millions
of pagans, human creatures having the same right
to truth, to light, to divine forgiveness that we have,
though they have never heard of the Bible nor of

CONCLUSION 237

the Gospels. In this difficult situation what is
the attitude of those who believe in and who lay
claim to the Hebraic revelation, under its Jewish
or under its Christian form? True religion must
give us an explanation of the status of humanity
which will not do violence to our reason, our con-
science, or our hearts, and will enable us to believe
in the salvation of all men. But the soul secure
on the ancient rock of Judaism, finds itself at the
very center of a religious synthesis which makes
it possible to judge and to understand all the frag-
ments of truth scattered throughout the world.
The different religions appear as so many special
manifestations, corresponding to the needs of the
different races, but grouped around the central
Truth, and more or less closely related to one
another, according to their distance from, or near-
ness to it.

The entire human race is thus united in a very
real spiritual oneness even though there seems to be,
because of the very nature of things, numerous
and necessary differences. This does not deter the
believer who lays claim to the prophetic tradition,
from hastening, through his prayers, the coming of
the day when God shall be One and His Name One.
What is this future in regard to the perfect anfi im-
mutable being, who knows neither change nor time,

238 THE UNKNOWN SANCTUARY

and whose existence is everlastingly present? It
signifies that the one God is really worshipped under
many forms, in very different cults, but in the Mes-
sianic era, the spiritual world will see unity of
worship realized.

Thus the believing Israelite attains through pro-
phetism unto the loftiest divine Revelation in the
past, and through Messianism, to the greatest re-
ligious hope in the future. His faith makes him
a citizen of the world, and his hope of the Kingdom
of God comforts him in the sorrows and shadows
of the present, by making it possible for him to
glimpse a complete manifestation of the eternal

truth that is yet to come.

*******

But the fact of Christianity is also here, and
claims our attention, and I feel constrained to seek
an explanation of it. It occupies so important a
place in the thoughts of men, it has uplifted and
enlightened and strengthened such a multitude of
souls for heroic struggles, leading them to the sub-
limest heights of saintliness; it has revealed itself
as a source so prodigiously abundant, of devotion
and virtue, of science and art, of poetry and elo-
quence; it has left its impress on so many races
and civilizations, and at the same time has appeared
under such a multitude of aspects. It suggests so

CONCLUSION 239

many problems, gives rise to so much criticism, and
troubles so many consciences because of the di-
visions and the conflicts it has engendered, the
fanaticisms it has inspired, the persecutions it has
instigated, and the travesties of which it is the end-
less subject, that in truth the mind is confused in
the presence of so formidable an enigma. Chris-
tianity rests on a Revelation of which Israel was
appointed guardian, and it teaches on the other
hand, that in the plan of a merciful God, the sal-
vation of the nations can only be founded on the
condemnation of the people who are the trustees
of this revelation. It cannot be possible that a true
religion can be built on so flagrant a contradic-
tion. The least that a Christian who had seriously
reflected on these problems could say is, that there
must be some unfathomed justice in the age-long
protest of Israel.

In the XHIth Century of the Christian era
the following event occurred, forming a striking
analogy to the Gospel story. A man appeared,
possessed of a divine vision, capable of revolution-
izing the world, of creating a new religion which
might have transformed the occidental world en-
tirely from top to bottom, in taking it back to the
pure source whence it sprang. I am speaking of
the blessed Francis of Assisi, who before his con-

240 THE UNKNOWN SANCTUARY

version, feeling himself chosen for a unique destiny,
said jestingly to his gay young companions: "You
will see that one day I shall be adored by the whole
world," When the humble penitent of Assisi came
to Rome, to kneel at the feet of the .sovereign pon-
tiff, to explain to him his plan for the reformation
M morals, and his ideal of the religious life, Innocent
III, versed in politics, did not repulse the strange
seraphic apparition, a living reproach to the cor-
ruption of the Church of those days. He made
haste, however, to clip the wings of the Franciscan
idea, while he opened his arms to him who brought
it. He hastened to strip it of its originality, and
of its vigor, by giving it a monastic setting; in a
word, according to the Gospel expression, by put-
ting new wine into old bottles. Later the Church
enshrined St. Francis of Assisi on its altars, and
no one saw that the bull of canonization in reality
proclaimed the failure of the Franciscan ideal,
smothered in its germ.

What would have happened if the Judaism of
the first century had accepted and embraced the
Gospel instead of refusing it? We would today
have in our two Talmuds, by the side of the words
of Hillel the Saint and of so many other pious
scholars, the Amar R. Yeshua ben Yosef Hannazri,
"words of Rabbi Jesus son of Joseph, the Naza-

CONCLUSION 241

rene," of whom it was said: "Surely this learned
man was mistaken in the imminent coming of the
Kingdom of Heaven in the form of a cosmic up-
heaval which would change the world, but what
sublime things he did say!" Would Judaism, en-
riched by this spiritual addition, have conquered
the pagan world? Would it the better have dis-
entangled from its authentic traditions, the two as-
pects of the divine Law, the particularist aspect for
Israel alone, and the universalist aspect, for all
men? No one can say with certainty; all are free
to believe it. But Christianity as it is, would not
have been born.

Christianity was born of the opposition of Juda-
ism to the preaching of the Gospel, therefore Chris-
tians ought to be infinitely grateful to Israel for
not accepting it. As for me, convinced that an
infinite wisdom directs the religious evolution of
humanity according to a providential plan, I could
not regret for an instant, that the pagan world
should have adopted and interpreted the Gospel
story on its own account, and for its own salvation.
I refuse, on the other hand, no less energetically
to admit that Judaism was wrong in continuing in
its hope of the Messianic advent, instead of believing
it to be realized. Jerusalem could not abdicate to
Rome, and for humanity which still gropes its way

242 THE UNKNOWN S

so painfully, this fidelity to the divine compact,
leaves open before us all the perspectives of salva-

tion.

*******

To those of my Christian brothers, who may
read these pages, I then address this appeal in clos-
ing: you who know only the body of Judaism and
who, in the words of the philosopher Renouvier,
find it unworthy, have you ever sought to discover
its soul? The thought alone, that this soul throbbed
in the heart of Jesus, ought to inspire you with the
desire to learn to know it. Within it there burns
a fire strangely able to throw light upon the des-
tinies of Christendom, and to bring to it the solution
of many of the questions that you ask yourselves.

To my brother Israelites I would say on '.he
other hand: the Church, this other living enigma,
is in the habit of portraying the Synagogue with the
sacred scroll in her hand and a bandage over her
eyes. There is much of truth in this picture, not
in the sense given to it by theology, but in that
which reveals to us at the same time Jewish his-
tory and the present state of Judaism. You pos-
sess treasures you know not of, or that you know
not how to use, and not only do you leave your
spiritual patrimony unproductive, you close your
eyes, at times voluntarily, to the perception of the

CONCLUSION 243

hand of God in the history of Israel. When will you
become the conscious instrument of the work that
the God of your fathers willed you should achieve
in this world?

Benamozegh in the title of his great work sum-
med up universal history, envisaged from the view-
point of the divine:

"Mankind cannot rise to the essential principles
on which society must rest unless it meet with
Israel.

"And Israel cannot fathom the deeps of its own
national and religious tradition, unless it meet with
mankind."

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